Young People and Mental Health Matters

By young Ryan Baraka Mariga Okemwa

Hello, My name is Ryan, and I would like to talk about my experience with mental health. Mental health matters at every age and often the impact it has on young people is often underestimated. It is important to ensure that it is dealt with appropriately from as early as possible to ensure children and young adults get the right support required to enable them to build important life skills and thrive in their adulthood. Drawing on my own experiences and those of close peers, I would like to address this by talking about a few issues that have affected me or my peers directly. Young people face some of the biggest challenges, more so in the last couple of years as we are transitioning into adulthood. Through this journey, it is often young people with mental health problems that face the biggest obstacles. However, before we dig deeper into this, let us start by clarifying what is classed as “mental health”. According to MentalHealth.Org, “Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through adulthood.” There are many factors that contribute to our mental health. However, I would like to address these in a bit more detail.

Cultural Stigma – The ethnicity of a person is their race, whereas the culture is the norms and values in which they identify, and these can sometimes affect mental health as they create an immense feeling of wanting to belong. Both of my parents are from Kenya and have the culture and traditions that they are trying to raise us with. With my parents’ family, e.g., my uncles, and aunties, I find that it is difficult for my parents and to them discuss matters concerning mental health or issues they are experiencing and there is this perception that you can’t really talk about it. You are just supposed to get on with the issue and basically suffer in silence. There is an unspoken rule of not burdening others with your issues and whatever issue you are facing is a “me issue.” Religion Stigma - The role of religion and simply “praying the issue away” is very common in African households. Whenever you try and talk about something, you are simply bombarded with bible scriptures and told to pray over the situation and that is it. It is never to be mentioned again. Although faith is essential and praying over situations is vital, it is also important for us to learn to listen and be able to talk about various issues that are affecting us. Another aspect of religion and mental health is how we can fit in as say Christians with our religious beliefs with people who are not religious and oppose our beliefs. Sometimes, friends can find you weird when you raise your beliefs to them, and you end up feeling a bit like an outcast. Sometimes, we feel we need to water down our beliefs to fit in.

Mental health is seen as a weakness and associated with negativity. Men for example are supposed to be these strong pillars and heads of their households, therefore, discussing anything about a struggle or an issue they are facing is unheard of. They simply suffer in silence for fear of appearing weak and feeling vulnerable in front of others.

I have experienced this when I have tried to speak to an uncle about a challenge I was facing and the first thing he said to me was, “you have to be a man now. You are no longer a child.” What does that even mean? It immediately made me feel like I can’t talk about things and a man should just silence his feelings and not share his inner thoughts. School-related stigma – I have a friend whom you could clearly see was having some issue in school and would often be rude and aggressive to a teacher and just seemed down and angry most of the time. One day, a teacher was probing my friend and they simply got up and walked out of the class and some of the other classmates started being rude and making odd comments.

When I approached my friend later, he just broke down in tears and declined to speak to me. I just advised him of the services and support available to him within the school to help him deal with any issue he is facing. Follow the link to read the rest of the article: https://mojatu.com/2022/09/30/young-people-andmental-health-matters/

THINK ABOUT YOURSELF - By Raveena Hargun

Self-care is about looking after yourself, doing things you love, and thinking about your mental health. This is a practice to help individuals, families, and communities to promote good health, preventing disease and maintaining good health for individuals with or without disabilities.

Here are a few types of activities you can do: Physical (Exercising), emotional (journaling), social (Family and friends), spiritual (meditation), and personal (Goals). Take note of these self-care activities, you could use them for ideas in the future.

Think about what strategies work for you. For example, ask for help when you need it and accept it when you are offered assistance. People are here to help when you need them to.

You can do self-care whenever you want but self-care never ever goes. As for me, I like to be organised when going out and time management is key for me. This is very important for mental health; you have to think about yourself and sometimes put yourself first. In addition to this, it is good to keep a good balance. Doing everything from physical, social, spiritual, and personal at once can be overwhelming. Family and friends can help and support you and doing things you love may help especially when you are unwell. People should try to balance what they do every day. Doing something else each day or week can help. Take at least a few hours off your phone because it is important to take breaks. It is beneficial for people to have fun activities in their lives and to be productive. Some activities that may help are Swimming, paintballing, escape room, or even going to a cafe with your friends and talking will help as well.

HARMFUL EFFECTS OF TOBACCO - By Raveena Hargun

Tobacco has proved to be harmful to many lives. Many people start using tobacco products in their early teen years getting them addicted at an early age. However, many people smoke because it helps them calm down their anxiety and stress levels. Smoking kills a lot of people and is killing our environment and planet Tobacco has been around for centuries and has led to the death of a lot of people. “Cigarettes kill about 6 million people every year, a number that will grow before it shrinks. Smoking in the twentieth century alone killed about 100 million people”, WHO. Is it not very scary to know this fact and how many people lost their lives? Tobacco can cause damage to your lungs leading to lung cancer. Here are the few other effects that Tobacco has on your breathing problems and chronic and respiratory problems. Hearing loss. Heart disease | Stroke | Blood circulation problems | Diabetes | Infections | Vision loss This is what you can do to change your life around: • Ask for help or try nicotine replacement therapy or go to your doctors and get them to help you. • Make a plan to quit - find the help and the support and stick to it. This is what happens when you start

smoking, the nicotine entering your bloodstream, increases your blood pressure. • You can do this by using nicotine patches or using vapes that has less nicotine. • There is support and rehab programmes, medication, multiple doctors’ visits, and health checks. During the lockdown, a lot of people in Reading had stopped smoking. NHS digital data shows 405 people in Reading set a date to quit using the NHS Stop Smoking Service between April last year and March. This is really encouraging because it shows that we are together in this to help everyone as a community and to make the Reading better for residents and the environment.