Mental Health and Wellbeing of Marginalised Youth during Covid 19 Pandemic.
Against a decade-long pattern of deteriorating mental health conditions among youth, Covid 19 pandemic made the situation far more worse. As per the Youth-led Action Research on Covid-19 pandemic on Marginalised Youth study, youth were forced to face the fear of losing their loved ones, stress, and anxiety over their future uncertainty, financial hardships, lack of opportunities and social isolation made them more vulnerable.
“As kids, me and my friends struggled every day, especially when we could actually see how hard our parents are working to support us all throughout the pandemic. However, we felt sharing our own problems would place an additional burden on them.”
Like him, youth across different countries suffered in silence which increased the gap in the bond they shared with their parents and families, making them more vulnerable and isolated. The unchecked mental health problems of parents such as stress, depression, and anger resulted in increased stress among the youth.
Also due to the rise in digital learning during the pandemic, teachers too faced challenges in understanding and adapting to new teaching methods and technologies. This resulted in stress and anxiety among them affecting their quality of teaching and making it more difficult for young students to understand the topic in online classes.
Due to the lack of support in providing digital infrastructure, by schools and the government, the digital divide increased massively making the youth from marginalised communities and rural areas face more challenges in accessing education thereby increasing the gap between social inequality. Young girls and women from Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, and Indonesia dropped out of school and a few of them were also forced to get married by their parents. Youth from the LGBTQI community faced more restrictions and they felt their home environment was hostile.
Youth researchers of Afghanistan sharing their findings during the data analysis workshop.
It was important to address these growing concerns of youth along with their parents and teachers to support them in understanding the complexity of various mental health conditions so that they are well-equipped and prepared to face the challenges life throws at them.
In an attempt to articulate youth voices, ASPBAE supported in conducting Youth-led Action Research on 'Mental and Well-being of Marginalised Youth' with an aim to contextualise mental health through a ground-up vocabulary of the youth, to develop local capacities, and to guide state-level policy making.
In order to build capacities, ASPBAE partnered with Mariwala Health Initiative (MHI) and iCall-TISS to train young researchers from the member countries on the basic vocabulary of mental health and learn about the framework of the 'mental health continuum'
“We learned that mental health problems are psychosocial, so we can contextualise the impact of the pandemic better. We now know how to behave with our friends who are sexually abused or who have mental health issues. We also learned how to respond but not diagnose because we are not experts.”
Using a participatory action research approach, youth from marginalised communities and neighbourhoods were not only involved in collecting data but also played a key role in designing the research objectives, questions, and analyses.
The research includes voices of the youth and their lived experiences from ten member countries of ASPBAE in the Asia-Pacific region, including Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste, Tajikistan, and Vietnam.
A major institutional gap that has been highlighted in almost all the country reports is the lack of mental health support structures in schools. Before the pandemic, an important form of coping mechanism for the youths was to express their feelings to friends and seek help. But even then, a majority of the youth were unaware of the basics of mental health, its symptoms, stressors, and preventive measures. This lack of knowledge has further stigmatised the illness among the youth and their families.
In order to remove this stigma and start the conversation, youth feel that schools should become the starting point for intervention. Availability of a ‘safe space’, counsellors in school, and a subject on mental health should be on the priority list. In order to address this, the group of young researchers from Mongolia collaborated with 33 high schools and are currently advocating for the need of psychosocial support in schools.
Students are provided awareness on mental health and counselling for returning back to school environment whereas weekly consultations with teachers and parents are held to support them in the transition of joining the school and in supporting the learners.
Youth researchers of Philippines sharing their experiences of the study.
Even youth from Timor-Leste and Sri Lanka are advocating with the local as well as national government to take necessary action to address the issue of Mental Health concern of youth. Through various presentations and engaging activities youth raised their voices to reduce the stigma around accessing mental health treatment.
Youth recommended the introduction of services such as helpline numbers or online counselling which will help in building initial level of trust. The deaf youth from Vietnam have further highlighted the need to have trained professionals learn sign language in order to provide the necessary psychosocial support to deaf communities.
“My family doesn’t know sign language very well, but I try to communicate as much as I can to overcome my anxieties. However I need support from a professional who can guide me personally without being dependent on the sign language interpreter for every conversation. It also in a way invades my privacy.”
In order to address this youth from Vietnam have planned various awareness campaigns around it advocating for making psychosocial support inclusive and accessible for all.
There is a crucial need for initiating intergenerational exchanges around the idea of mental health. Parents and elders in the community need to be sensitised about the psychosocial factors which can affect the mental health of the youth and children. Civil society organisations, who command a certain level of trust in the community, can play a crucial role in facilitating this exchange and also hold individual learning sessions for the parents.
Here, mental health messaging can be made more palatable by using local languages and popular grassroot modes of communication such as street theatres, community radio and local television programmes.
As countries now emerge from the clutches of the pandemic, a renewed strategy should be adopted by the government health departments to cater specifically to mental health support for its citizens. The government should be at the forefront of initiating this ecosystem approach to mental health and psychosocial counselling, and then incorporate necessary partners to build a positive mental health movement in their respective countries.
An interesting point which emerges is the need to re-equip our educational systems with the vocabulary of mental health and psychosocial counselling. Taking a cue from physical health and nutrition which uni incorporated into schools through the availability of free and healthy meals to youth of all sections, mental health should also be made a part and parcel of the school system. Therefore, it is important to add this new cost of building mental health support infrastructure at the school/ university level in educational budgets.
This investment can go a long way to build healthier, productive and happier youths. Youth from the Philippines have incorporated the services of psychosocial support and cost to build such accessible and inclusive infrastructure in their alternative budget which they provided to the government.
Youth are always regarded as the leaders of tomorrow, however with the right support system and mentoring they can lead our way today. Therefore, it is important to provide them with the right psychosocial support which will help them become leaders of today.
Written by Priyanka Pal
Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE)
Join our next #MHForAll webinar, where we’ll be discussing the importance of youth participation in mental health programming.