According to Kampala Capital City Authority data, 90,530 cases of mental health disorders among students were registered between July 2024 and June 2025, marking a 12.2 percent increase compared to the previous years. Mental health trainers say there is a rise in suicide and suicide attempts caused by academic pressure, family conflicts, financial hardships, and unmet emotional needs. Exacerbated by drug abuse, sports betting, and addiction to online platforms.
I do not know about you, but when I see these numbers, I am incensed. We have got to do something beyond conferences and expert panel discussions, and newspaper articles to help ourselves and our young people. I say, us first because, like it has been said 100,000 times, you cannot give what you do not have.
Anyway, back to the children. First of all, their problems seem to be more advanced than ours were when we were their age. (Excuse me for assuming that we are fossil-mates. But allow me for just a few more paragraphs).
These days, school fees and other physical needs might be the easiest thing to afford a child. The intangible is way more complex and difficult to understand. And yet it affects everything and digs deep. What is the point of educating children through to university only to end up with a mentally broken down elite and a well-written suicide note? That is if they hang in there for that long? God help us!
I know of schools where learners are in class from 5am to 10pm with half-hour breaks for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All in the name of chasing grades. On top of having sometimes disgruntled, underpaid teachers breathing down their necks, their parents (us), who have hustled tooth and nail to get the money to facilitate their stay at school, are demanding results and do not want to hear any excuses.
And then there is the not-so-small issue of the school bully who picks on the not-so-well-off children because they do not have the latest iPhone or do not receive 800k every week for pocket money.
There is also the child whose parents provide everything that money can buy, but their parents ‘love or time, and so they are bingeing on drugs that are smuggled in by one of their classmates, who somehow always has a supply of all kinds of drugs in their backpack next to their biology black counter book. Slimming tabs, drugs to heighten concentration in class, a pill to help one sleep, name it, he has got it, and it is cheap.
The schools think they have it all under control because they are applying scare tactics that worked in 1994, but have absolutely nothing on 2025 innovations.
The children have mastered the art of smiling, saying thank you, and please because that is what you want to hear, but behind that sweet child mask is a depression and a world so dark and complicated that your middle-aged self would need a lifetime of therapy to wade through it. I know you know it and have heard it many times, but let me say it one more time; your sweet child knows more than they let on.
And it is okay. You do not have to know it all or understand it all, because you cannot. Just do some smart parenting. Finding help does not mean you have failed as a parent. It means you are woke. Because honestly, what are the odds that of the 90,530 cases, yours is not one of them?
So, here is a thought, as you do your role being the good parent, guardian, teacher, community elder, DR PHD., MPHDL, LED, or whatever other titles you force us to add to your name, how about you book a few therapy sessions for the young people under your care every once in a while not necessarily with the deaconess or reverend at your church. That is great, too, but a trained mental health practitioner would really be great. And there are a number of free service providers. Google is your friend.