‘Students are stressed!’
Published:Friday | May 19, 2023 | 1:23 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
After the Office of the Children’s Advocate (OCA) conducted its first full-year assessment of persons who contacted the SafeSpot helpline during 2022, mental illness was found to account for the majority of the issues children who called in said they were challenged with.
SafeSpot was launched in May 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a solution for children to directly seek assistance or just to talk to a counsellor by either calling a 24/7 toll-free line or sending messages to @safespotja on Instagram and Snapchat, OCA’s WebChat link, BiP for Digicel users, and WhatsApp.
During the year 2022, 56 per cent of all contacts through messages and calls to SafeSpot were related to mental-health issues children were facing primarily due to challenges in their homes.
In 2022, counsellors employed by SafeSpot answered 450 contactors with unspecified mental-health concerns.
Children’s Advocate Diahann Gordon Harrison, who presented the data at the Terra Nova All Suite Hotel in St Andrew on Wednesday, is worried that this is a growing problem which enough is not being done to address primarily because scientific evidence may not be readily available that matches the actual growing rate of attention needed by children.
From data collected during the conversations had on the SafeSpot helpline, the OCA was able to place these mental-health challenges into the categories of relationships to caregiver; family health and well-being; emotional distress - fear and anxiety problems; concerns about self; self-harming behaviour; suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts; friends and friendships; and academic issues.
During Wednesday’s gathering, Gordon Harrison expressed great concern for not only how broken homes are greatly affecting the mental health of children, but also academic stress.
“Students are stressed! They are stressed, and they reached out to SafeSpot, with a lot about academic issues. What was very telling was in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, when exams were on again, off again, postponed to give more time, not sure of the format of PEP, CXC, not sure what’s going on with labs, SBAs, and so on, children were stressed, and so they reached out to us a lot about academic issues that they were having,” Gordon Harrison said.
“Some wanted exams to hurry up and come so they could move on. Some wanted more time because they didn’t think they were as prepared. Some were concerned because of the high expectations that people had of them. Some were perfectionists and had high expectations of themselves and they were just stressed. I think that’s the best word to describe it,” she said.
She said youngsters from Kingston, particularly females, led in the numbers of contacts made to SafeSpot about academic issues draining their energy. Females from St Andrew, Manchester, and Clarendon followed in the ranking of highest numbers of contacts in the category.
“Most males who reached out to us about academic issues came from Kingston, but really, it’s the girls who were really stressed and expressing that to SafeSpot,” Gordon Harrison said.
Pleased with results
The establishment of SafeSpot was done in 2021 with the help of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ).
Speaking with The Gleaner yesterday, Novia Condell, health specialist at UNICEF, said she was pleased with the results outlined by the OCA on Wednesday, particularly of children reporting about their mental health and stress issues through WhatsApp messages to the SafeSpot contact number.
“We recognise that Jamaica is among the world, where adolescents [and] children are faced with fairly high levels of stress and other mental-health issues. We are pleased at UNICEF that there is an acknowledgement among our government partner [OCA] that this support is needed, and as such, this helpline has been established to address some of the need,” Condell said.
“This is exactly why there was a need for a SafeSpot. Young people and children are asking for more emotional support, more mental health and well-being support. We are aware that our young people are reaching out. They themselves are aware that they need help and support, and they are reaching out and trying to find it,” she said.
...Young adults are suffering, too
Similar to the two-year-old SafeSpot helpline, the U-Matter chatline, which was created through a partnership with the Ministry of Health and Wellness, UNICEF, and the Caribbean Child Development Centre (CCDC) at The University of the West Indies (UWI) Open Campus, has revealed that many young adults, like children and adolescents, have been suffering from mental-health issues.
That is according to Novia Condell, health specialist at UNICEF.
Speaking with The Gleaner yesterday, Condell said: “U-Matter has also, up to March last year and March this year, received close to 2,500 contacts over text as well, so the younger kids are reaching out, as are older folks, because while SafeSpot does cater to the needs of the younger adolescents and children, U-Matter caters to the 16 to 24 age group,” Condell said.
“We see in Jamaica where our young people have told us, through U-Report surveys, that young people have told us that this [stress] is a high-priority issue for them. They are not well-equipped to cope with the high levels of stress that they face, whether through school, work, inter-personal challenges at homes [or] in their community, among their peer groups; whether through other issues around violence in their communities, in their homes and so on ... . We know our young people are dealing with a lot and they are asking for more support,” she said.
Condell believes one possible solution to address these mental0health issues is that of greater awareness at community levels, and to better equip Health and Family Life (HFLE) teachers, teachers, peers and others to better recognise mental-health stress and have a clearer idea of where they can refer youth, provide support “and to know when this is bigger than me and I have to refer to a professional”.
On the part of UNICEF, to bring new solutions on the ground, she told The Gleaner that the organisation is working with local partners, especially the Ministry of Health and Wellness and the Ministry of Education and Youth, to do more in broadening mental health and psychosocial support for young people.
For 2022, SafeSpot received a total of 2,345 direct calls or contacts, of which 85 per cent were WhatsApp messages from children making reports of challenges they are facing.