What is mental health?
A state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.
Psychosocial support: refers to the processes and actions that promote the holistic wellbeing of people in their social world. It includes support provided by family and friends. PSS can also be described as a process of facilitating resilience within individuals, families and communities
Situational Analysis of mental health in Uganda
Mental health problems occur in 10 to 20 % of children worldwide. It is known that mental health problems in childhood tend to persist into adulthood and apart from the suffering they cause for every affected individual, mental illness also entails a large economic burden through the depletion of labour and the resources needed for care. Early prevention is regarded as a sustainable and probably cost-effective method to reduce the burden of mental disorders - especially in low-income countries where resources for care for mental disorders are low
Schools in Uganda are ideal places for prevention and health promotion because interventions can be conducted conveniently in this setting and reach a high number of children and adolescents. Furthermore, the school itself is a place where children’s mental health can be strengthened, for example by increasing school connectedness. School connectedness has been defined as the belief by students that adults in the school care about their learning as well as about them as individuals
Studies conducted in high-income countries have highlighted school connectedness as a particularly important protective factor for a range of adverse mental health outcomes in youth. In addition, student participation might be beneficial for mental health of students, although existing research is rather sparse and contradictory.
However, school can also be a place where children’s mental health is harmed, for example through experiences of violence. In Uganda, for example, corporal punishment still exists despite an official ban in 1997 by the Ministry of Education and Sports. With regard to violence from peers, bullying, as one type of school violence, is a well-known risk factor for poor mental health of students in high-income as well as in low-income countries
In general, most research on the association between school-related factors and mental health of students has been conducted in high-income countries. However, both the school environment and the epidemiology of mental disorders in high-income countries differ substantially from settings like Uganda.
In Uganda, violence from peers is common, as well as violence from school staff, and violence from school staff is associated with poor mental health. However, it is not clear what the mechanism for this relationship is. It is possible that this relationship is in fact mediated by poor connectedness to school and other students (peers) but we identified no studies testing this pathway. Similarly, student participation might impact on school connectedness and in turn influence students’ mental health. It is also not known whether contextual-level variables, such as being in a larger school and being in a rural or urban school, impact on students’ likelihood of having mental health difficulties in low income settings. Understanding these relationships will give us valuable insight into how to design effective interventions to improve student mental health outside high -income countries.
