By Mutuvi Janet
Education stakeholders have been urged to consider implementing mental health education as a subject in the Kenyan school curriculum.
Muthoni Muhu, a counseling psychologist and founder of Aviva Consultants, said that mental health education should be regularized, just the way Physical Education (PE) is taught in schools.
“The same way the education stakeholders have embedded PE lessons in the school curriculum, they should also enroll mental health education so as to help fight the mental illnesses children suffer,” she said.
She said mental health needs to be normalized and it should start at a young age.
“If not, young people will not talk about their mental health, nor seek the help they need for anxiety, depression or suicidal thoughts and self-harm,” she noted.
According to Muhu, most adults with mental illnesses have had traumatic childhood wounds of abuse, abandonment, co-dependency, learning disabilities and developmental challenges that go unnoticed and undiagnosed, causing harm later on in life.
“The government should consider this to ensure that our children get to know how to handle some difficulties which may cause harm rather than waiting to treat the harm later in life,” she advised.
