•Kenyan youths need to talk to experts or their friends about what they go through
•They need guidance on how to deal with issues of relationships and other problems
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Depression is a fast-growing killer disease among the Kenyan youth. Every time a ‘strange’ story goes around, we always find a young and promising Kenyan involved. This compels us to wonder whether some youths value their lives at all.
Among the causative agents are cases of poor mentorships which leads to a weak approach among unemployed youth and other job seekers, cheating in relationships, harsh lifestyles which promise nothing but tough times ahead. Prolonged frustrations have been known to cause depression.
A person will go through an unpleasant experience and decide to keep it to themselves; if it happens again, they still keep it to themselves in the name of ‘keeping up with the world’, which is mostly just the picture that is painted on social media. This life has gone through countless filters to make it ‘Instagram worthy’ just to gain likes. Weak minds and negative thinking amount to depression among affected individuals, leading to separation or total detachment from society.
This is where we start to lose the youth as they smile in public and cry behind closed doors. Frustration is generated internally and it piles up slowly in one’s mind for years before it affects them to the extent of taking action beyond their thinking. Little knowledge on how to approach harsh living conditions, for instance, has forced many people to either change tactics of living or give in and start breaking the law either through crime or engaging in drugs, which is not a solution.
During this period, very few people share their problems and end up surviving, others cannot and end up getting enslaved by the burden of depression. Another serious factor which promotes depression is living in denial; the affected individuals may find it hard to open up to people especially on matters of romantic relationships, health and other serious and confidential issues.
Many youths will accept to die alone because they will not withstand humiliation from their colleagues. It is hard to conclude what others are going through, you will only realise after extreme outcomes of the decisions of affected individuals. Few people believe in themselves and they trust their friends with their information so they share and acquire solutions.
The larger percentage want to share but feel insecure about giving their information, so they end up consoling themselves with the common phrase;’wacha nipambane na hali yangu’.
Youths need to pray continually, rethink seeing a mentor, sharing information with an expert or close friends and checking on their health status to overcome daily setbacks and frustrations.