Young Workers’ Mental Health Matters

Written by: Margianta Surahman Juhanda Dinata, Founder & Executive Director, Emancipate Indonesia

It’s fairly easy to answer if youth leadership is needed in mental health, but it’s harder to answer if we have addressed the inequality in it. The reality is in low-middle income countries, many young workers–including care workers and mental health professionals–are deprived of their basic rights, such as decent wages, reasonable working hours, fair contracts and other basic rights. Without these rights, it is harder for young workers to maintain their mental health. Since too many are overworked and underpaid, mental health has become a luxury for many young people.

This should not be normalized. If workers’ rights are determinants to our working class’ mental health, then the more workers’ rights are respected, the better their chances are to maintain their mental health.

I have said this many times, and I will say it again: If young workers are underpaid and overworked, they will be too hungry and too tired to maintain their mental health. Under these conditions, we cannot ask them to work happily and provide the best for their workplace, their family, and themselves.

Knowing these inequalities as challenges, my youth-led non-profit Emancipate Indonesia has advocated for decent and inclusive work for all through webinars, research and campaigns. We have also started conversations in social media about the struggles of young workers, including phenomenons like ‘Quiet Quitting’ that is closely related to our mental wellbeing in the workplace. I am also proud to be a part of the Being, a mental health initiative that aims to learn the context–including inequality–of communities and young people in 13 countries, before investing and mobilizing resources to support prevention and promotion initiatives in said countries.

The economic inequality around us has made it clear that basic rights and the mental health of young workers are two inseparable issues. Mental health webinars, training, one-off leadership conferences and ‘awareness’ projects alone are not enough to ensure the mental health of young workers.

We must go beyond business as usual. We need to look at mental health in the workplace beyond the individual lens, and challenge ourselves with intersectional and systemic lenses. By doing so, we emphasize the collective responsibility of mental health, rather than merely the individualized ones.

Here are some honest questions to mental health experts: Have we rethink what we mean by ‘expertise’, and include working class youth and young people with lived experiences as a part of that conversation? Are they fairly compensated in our mental health programs and well respected with their own agency?

When young workers’ basic rights are fulfilled, and they have access to social protections, only then can they maintain their mental health. Now that we understand that workers’ rights and mental health are intertwined, it is about time we push mental health policies, practitioners, and industries to acknowledge the existing inequality and make sure no one is truly left behind in ensuring mental health for all.