Mental Health Awareness commemorated

Ntsoaki Motaung

Higher learning institutions normally record cases of people living with mental health issues.

This was said by Country Director of the Institute of Development Management (IDM) Molapo Thibeli at the event of the Mental Health Awareness Day commemoration held in Maseru.

According to Thibeli, a number of tertiary education institutions suffer in silence the brunt of mental illness because most youths at these institutions are faced with a plethora of challenges at this stage in their lives which they have no clue on best to deal with them.

“We are delighted to celebrate the mental health awareness day as an institute to raise awareness amongst our students so that they can have knowledge on how they can deal with mental issues. This is because a lot of tertiary institutions normally record cases of people with mental health,” he said.

Speaking at the same event, IDM Registra ‘Mathabo Sebilo indicated that, the Mental Health Awareness Day is normally celebrated on the 10^th day of October each year adding that this year’s edition was being marked under the theme “Mental Health in an equal world”.

“Students are mostly at a stage where they are vulnerable to mental health because they are at a period when a lot is going on in their lives. It is a time when their relationships, new marriages and schoolwork mount pressure on them. Mental health challenges are not only seen on people who are normally called crazy, but also on people we may think of as still fine because they look so,” she said.

Sebilo pointed out that social media has emerged as one of the greatest contributors to mental health challenges because of the rampant cyber-bullying phenomenon.

Meanwhile, Mohlomi Mental Health Hospital Psychologist Pearl Letsoela, said mental health has a number of different causes according to their ages.

“For children, they may result from complications experienced during birth, and for other groups of age it maybe because they have inherited that mental issues from their elders, drug abuse and extreme poverty can also lead to mental illness,” she said.