mental health
Speakers for increasing allocation for mental health in national budget
Speakers at a webinar have stressed the need for raising people’s awareness about mental health and increasing allocation for it in the national budget.
The ACTIONISTS organized the webinar on the occasion of World Mental Health Day.
Psychologist Mehtab Khanam said inequality is increasing day by day and economic inequality in particular is becoming more obvious having impact on mental health.
Read:Protecting Your Child’s Mental Health: 10 Tips for Parents
"And there is a deep connection between this inequality and mental health. Having good mental health means that a person does not stumble in life," said the Professor at the Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, Dhaka University.
It is imperative to increase the allocation for mental health in the national budget, said Mehtab Khanam.
Sabina Fayez Rashid, Professor, Dean of James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University; Samanjar Chowdhury, Operations Lead of BRAC Youth Platform, BRAC, Fairuz Faiza Bithar, Co-Founder of Moner School and founder of ACTIONISTS A.N.M Fakhrul Amin Forhad also spoke at the webinar conducted by Sharin Shahjahan Naomi, Assistant Professor, Asian University for Women.
Professor Sabina Fayez Rashid said policies and interventions are needed because mental health issues are still neglected.
"Different communities, young people, government, NGOs and many such organizations are working but there should be more and more discussions on this issue," she said.
Fairooz Faizah Bitheer said mental health awareness should start at an early age. "Policy makers need to raise their voices on this issue as well. Mental health should not be neglected but should be seen as a priority."
Samanjar Chowdhury said ensuring good mental health involves good governance and leadership from the lowest to the highest level.
"Everyone must come forward to make everyone aware of this, from teenagers to young people."
Read:World Mental Health Day: What effect does depression have on the performance of athletes?
Quoting recent statistics, ACTIONISTS said 85 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries suffer from a variety of mental and neurological disorders, while about 92 percent are denied access to health care.
In addition, the Corona epidemic has created financial, social, and political inequalities around the world, with the rich gaining more and more wealth, and the poor falling below the poverty line.
As a result of this inequality, the mental health of the people has deteriorated even more.
Bangladesh has a nominal 0.44 percent of the total health budget allocation for mental health, which is set aside for most mental hospitals but is not implemented properly, said ACTIONISTS.
Protecting Your Child’s Mental Health: 10 Tips for Parents
A child’s mental health determines how they feel, behave, think and act. Their cognitive and emotional developments depend on how they process emotions and thoughts from a young age. Unfortunately, the social stigma dictates that ensuring a child’s physical well-being is more significant than protecting their mental well-being. Now, it is high time to reassess this stance and break out of this misconception; because the mental health of children is as important as their physical health. Let’s find out some basic ways of protecting a kid's mental health.
How to Support Your Child’s Mental Health?
Forming the right kind of habits and thought patterns that can protect your child’s mental health is not an easy chore. To help parents succeed in their journey to protect their child’s mental health, this article has brought forth 10 well-researched tips and techniques.
Expressing and showing love
A sense of belonging is created in children when they feel loved, welcomed, and accepted. Often, parents disregard the importance of making it a point to show or express their love as it is in a parent’s nature to love their offspring.
Read How to Overcome Depression Without Medication?
But to a child, a simple gesture of love may go unnoticed until they are reassured of the love and acceptance they are surrounded by.
Embracing them or telling them how much they are loved are, thus, as significant as expressing your love through other gestures of love. When children observe these expressions of love, they grow up to channel their emotions better and form stronger and healthier relationships in the future.
Read UNICEF: Battered by pandemic, kids need mental health help
Validating their feelings
Children often go through bouts of sadness and anger which is considered normal child behavior. As their caregiver, it is imperative to validate all of their feelings. Invalidating or ignoring their emotions hampers their mental health to the extent that they can grow up to be shameful of certain emotions.
Contrarily, if they are encouraged to talk about their feelings, and their emotions are recognized, they feel seen and heard. They become prone to validate their own feelings and begin to develop a sense of self-esteem where they can depend on themselves for mental support. These children are also good communicators of their emotions and hence, can deal with problems better.
Read Mental Health: Types of Mental Illness and supporting someone with a mental health problem
Showing how to deal with problems
A child learns how to deal with adversities from the people they are surrounded by. If the caregivers give up easily in the face of an obstacle or simply choose not to take risks in fear of failure, the child imitates this behavior. Children who develop these behavioral patterns show signs of anxiety and even grow up to be anxious adults with other mental health issues like depression and panic attacks.
On the other hand, if a child is taught that it is okay to fail while solving a problem, that there are several ways to solve a problem or to think of a solution without panicking, that child learns to take care of their own mental health.
Read Memory loss: Types, symptoms, and when to seek help
Asking questions and listening
As a parent, asking your child questions shows that you are interested in their lives. Asking about their day or their interests in life can make them feel more connected to the caregivers. Children long for this bonding and doing so helps to protect their mental health to a great extent. Listening to them without any distraction while they answer is also significant as it shows them the importance they have in their parent’s life.
How to Overcome Depression Without Medication?
Prescribed medicines can be life-changing for many individuals suffering from depression. Many patients use different antidepressants to control symptoms emerging from depression. They sometimes have adverse effects and are costly, depending on their health insurance coverage. There are other non-prescription ways to treat some of the symptoms of depression. People should use those for treating depression without medication or a supplement to the antidepressants.
Non-medicated Ways to Overcome Depression
People should always treat depression symptoms seriously since depression does not mitigate on its own. While there are fairly many things one can do to support their mental health, people shouldn't try those things whimsically. They must speak with their doctor about some of the self-help methods that may assist their therapy.
Read Mental Health: Types of Mental Illness and supporting someone with a mental health problem
Yet still, some practices or habits can keep depression at bay to some extent. Here are some:
Getting More Sleep
Sleep and emotion are inextricably linked. If anyone gets less sleep, his emotions will inevitably wave. So, it's important to get excellent sound sleep every day.
This refers to having regular bedtimes and routine wake-up hours. Setting the bedroom properly will help have a soothing sleep at night. To welcome sleep, avoiding computers, smartphones, or other devices that demand attention will also help.
There are measures one may take to attempt to enhance the quality of his sleep. People should
- Allow themselves some time before going to bed to decompress; do something soothing, and avoid stressful activities or thoughts.
- Set a timely alarm to get up at the same time every morning and go to bed at the same time every night.
- Maintain a regular nighttime regimen.
- Turn off their gadgets and spend some time reading a book.
Read Memory loss: Types, symptoms, and when to seek help
Also, they should try to spend some time outdoors every day, even on days when they do not feel like it. Because light regulates sleep cycles and circadian rhythms, a lack of sunlight may make it more difficult to sleep at night.
Mental Health: Types of Mental Illness and supporting someone with a mental health problem
Proper counseling and treatment can cure mental problems completely like other physical problems. Since mental health complications are not like physical pain, many do not understand when they should actually seek mental health support. Moreover, family or social taboos also stand in the way. With that not, World Mental Health 2021 is going to observe on October 10 with the theme, 'Mental health in an unequal world.' So, when should a person seek help for mental problems? And how to support people with mental health problems? We will get to know about mental health support in this article.
What is a mental health problem?
The actual definition of mental illness varies according to country, culture, and people. Hence, there is no unified definition of mental health problems. However, some common words are used to indicate mental illness. For example, psychological problems, mental health, headache, etc., are used to indicate mental illness.
Read: Memory loss: Types, symptoms, and when to seek help
How to understand if anyone is suffering from mental illness?
When a person's behavior changes drastically, especially the emotional expression changes, which starts to affect the daily activities, in such cases, one should understand that the person is not mentally stable. Apart from these symptoms, there are some specific issues that may indicate a mental health problem. Usually, people with mental illness suddenly become excited. People are also seen keeping themselves away from everyone for a long time.
Staying upset for more than two weeks in a row can be a sign of mental health problems. Quarrels with everyone and don't want to talk to anyone can be the symptoms too. Other symptoms are hearing some irrelevant sounds, unnecessarily doubting, not taking care by stopping doing regular daily activities like bathing or brushing teeth, and dissatisfaction and loss of interest in the activities that bring happiness.
Sometimes, people stop themselves from making any sort of social relationships, thinking negatively about themselves or feeling responsible for everything, decisiveness or loss of concentration, and plan suicidal thoughts and attempts.
Read: Covid-19 Brain Fog: How to improve memory power and brain health after Covid
In some cases, sleep may be reduced abnormally or increase, feel an aversion to food or increased appetite and loss of interest in home, office, or professional work.
However, these problems do not mean that the person has a mental illness. But if anyone has these signs or symptoms, the person should talk to a psychiatrist. After that, the doctor can analyze it and understand whether any action should be taken.
Covid highlights growing need for mental health support
Countries across the world, including Bangladesh, will observe World Mental Health Day Sunday, at a time when there has been a "worldwide failure to provide people with the mental health services they need as the Covid-19 pandemic is highlighting a growing need for mental health support."
The day is observed every year on October 10 across the world for raising awareness about mental health.
President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina issued separate messages on the eve of World Mental Health Day 2021 whose theme is "Mental Health in an Unequal World."
"Mental health problems have significantly increased due to the Covid-19 pandemic," President Hamid said. He stressed the need for family and social support for patients with mental health issues along with treatment.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said the development of mental health alongside physical health is vital for building a happy and prosperous nation. She directed the concerned authorities to work in a way that mental health services can be brought to the doorsteps of people.
Read: World misses most 2020 mental health targets: WHO
World misses most 2020 mental health targets: WHO
The UN health agency's new Mental Health Atlas paints a disappointing picture of a worldwide failure to provide people with the mental health services they need, at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is highlighting a growing need for mental health support.
The latest edition of the Atlas, which includes data from 171 countries, provides a clear indication that the increased attention given to mental health in recent years has yet to result in a scale-up of quality mental services that are aligned with needs, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Friday.
Issued every three years, the Atlas is a compilation of data provided by countries around the world on mental health policies, legislation, financing, human resources, availability and use of services and data collection systems.
It is also the mechanism for monitoring progress towards meeting the targets in WHO's Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan.
"It is extremely concerning that, despite the evident and increasing need for mental health services, which has become even more acute during the Covid-19 pandemic, good intentions are not being met with investment," said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO.
"We must heed and act on this wake-up call and dramatically accelerate the scale-up of investment in mental health because there is no health without mental health."
Read: UNICEF: Battered by pandemic, kids need mental health help
Lack of progress in leadership, governance and financing
None of the targets for effective leadership and governance for mental health, provision of mental health services in community-based settings, mental health promotion and prevention, and strengthening of information systems, was close to being achieved.
In 2020, just 51 per cent of the WHO's 194 member states reported that their mental health policy or plan was in line with international and regional human rights instruments, way short of the 80 per cent target.
And only 52 per cent of countries met the target relating to mental health promotion and prevention programmes, also well below the 80 per cent target.
The only 2020 target met was a reduction in the rate of suicide by 10 per cent, but even then, only 35 countries said they had a stand-alone prevention strategy, policy or plan.
Steady progress was evident, however, in the adoption of mental health policies, plans and laws, as well as in improvements in the capacity to report on a set of core mental health indicators.
Read: COVID-19 disrupts mental health services in most countries
However, the percentage of government health budgets spent on mental health has scarcely changed during the last years, still hovering around 2 per cent.
Moreover, even when policies and plans included estimates of required human and financial resources, just 39 per cent of responding countries indicated that the necessary human resources had been allocated and 34 per cent that the required financial resources had been provided.
Transfer of care to community slow
While the systematic decentralisation of mental health care to community settings has long been recommended by the WHO, only 25 per cent of responding countries met all the criteria for integration of mental health into primary care.
While progress has been made in training and supervision in most countries, the supply of medicines for mental health conditions and psychosocial care in primary healthcare services remains limited.
This is also reflected in the way that government funds for mental health are allocated, highlighting the urgent need for deinstitutionalisation.
More than 70 per cent of total government expenditure on mental health was allocated to mental hospitals in middle-income countries, compared with 35 per cent in high-income countries.
This indicates that centralised mental hospitals and institutional inpatient care still receive more funds than services provided in general hospitals and primary healthcare centres in many countries.
There was, however, an increase in the percentage of countries reporting that treatment of people with specific mental health conditions (psychosis, bipolar disorder and depression) is included in national health insurance or reimbursement schemes – from 73 per cent in 2017 to 80 per cent (or 55 per cent of member states) in 2020.
Global estimates of people receiving care for specific mental health conditions (used as a proxy for mental health care as a whole) remained less than 50 per cent, with a global median of 40 per cent of people with depression and just 29 per cent of people with psychosis receiving care.
More encouraging was the increase in countries reporting mental health promotion and prevention programmes, from 41 per cent of member states in 2014 to 52p er cent in 2020.
However, 31 per cent of total reported programmes did not have dedicated human and financial resources, 27 per cent did not have a defined plan, and 39 per cent had no documented evidence of progress and or impact.
The global median number of mental health workers per 100,000 people has increased slightly from nine workers in 2014 to 13 workers per 100,000 people in 2020.
However, there was a very high variation between countries of different income levels, with the number of mental health workers in high-income countries more than 40 times higher than in low-income ones.
New targets for 2030
The global targets reported on in the Mental Health Atlas are from the WHO's Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan, which contained targets for 2020 endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2013.
This Plan has now been extended to 2030 and includes new targets for the inclusion of mental health and psychosocial support in emergency preparedness plans, the integration of mental health into primary health care, and research on mental health.
"The new data from the Mental Health Atlas shows us that we still have a very long way to go in making sure that everyone, everywhere, has access to quality mental health care," said Dévora Kestel, director of the department of mental health and substance use at the WHO.
"But I am encouraged by the renewed vigour that we saw from governments as the new targets for 2030 were discussed and agreed and am confident that together we can do what is necessary to move from baby steps to giant leaps forward in the next 10 years."
UNICEF: Battered by pandemic, kids need mental health help
Governments must pour more money and resources into preserving the mental well-being of children and adolescents, the U.N.'s child protection agency urged in a report Tuesday that sounded alarms about blows to mental health from the COVID-19 pandemic that hit poor and vulnerable children particularly hard.
The United Nations Children’s Fund said its “State of the World’s Children” study is its most comprehensive look so far this century at the mental health of children and adolescents globally. The coronavirus crisis, forcing school closures that upended the lives of children and adolescents, has thrust the issue of their mental well-being to the fore.
UNICEF said it may take years to fully measure the extent of the pandemic's impact on young people's mental health. Psychiatrists quickly saw signs of distress, with children and adolescents seeking help for suicidal thoughts, anxiety, eating disorders and other difficulties as lockdowns and switching to remote learning severed them from friends and routines and as COVID-19 killed parents and grandparents.
Read: Young children's diets could get worse under Covid: Unicef
“With nationwide lockdowns and pandemic-related movement restrictions, children have spent indelible years of their lives away from family, friends, classrooms, play — key elements of childhood itself,” said UNICEF's executive director, Henrietta Fore.
“The impact is significant, and it is just the tip of the iceberg,” Fore said. “Even before the pandemic, far too many children were burdened under the weight of unaddressed mental health issues. Too little investment is being made by governments to address these critical needs.”
Pediatric psychiatrists say they were already short of resources before the pandemic brought a surge in caseloads. UNICEF said spending on promoting and protecting mental health “is extremely low” yet the needs are pressing. Citing pre-pandemic figures from 2019, UNICEF estimated nearly 46,000 children and adolescents ages 10 to 19 end their own lives every year.
The scale of pandemic-related distress among children and adolescents has jolted some governments into action. France, which is hosting a two-day global summit on mental health this week, has offered free therapy sessions for children and young people and pledged to extend that help from next year to everyone with a doctor’s prescription. Elsewhere, counseling hotlines — some newly opened to help people struggling with their mental health during the pandemics — saw surging demand.
UNICEF said multiple worries affect the mental health of children and adolescents, including anxieties over possible illness, lockdowns, school closures and other upheavals in their lives. Lockdowns also fueled behavior problems, and were particularly hard-felt by kids with autism and attention and hyperactivity disorders, UNICEF said.
Remote learning was beyond the reach of hundreds of millions of young people. One in three schoolchildren couldn’t take part because they had no internet access or television, UNICEF said. Children in the poorest families were most affected. It estimated that two out of five children in eastern and southern Africa were still out of school as recently as July.
Read:1 million Afghan children could die from malnutrition: Unicef
Even when they haven't been forced to drop out of school and work to help make ends meet, children also are being hit by the pandemic’s destructive repercussions for jobs and economies. UNICEF said the crisis has triggered “a sharp uptick” in numbers of children in poverty, with an additional 142 million children thought to have slipped into poverty last year.
Financial hardship and school closures could also put more girls at risk of being forced into early marriage as child brides, UNICEF warned.
Although children and adolescents have been less likely to die from COVID-19 than older and more vulnerable people, UNICEF cautioned that the pandemic has clouded their long-term future and “upended their lives, and created real concern for their mental health and well-being."
“It will hang over the aspirations and lifetime earnings of a generation whose education has been disrupted,” it said. “The risk is that the aftershocks of this pandemic will chip away at the happiness and well-being of children, adolescents and caregivers for years to come.”
‘OK not to be OK’: Mental health takes top role at Olympics
For decades, they were told to shake it off or toughen up — to set aside the doubt, or the demons, and focus on the task at hand: winning. Dominating. Getting it done.
For years, Simone Biles was one of the very best at that. Suddenly — to some, shockingly — she decided she wasn’t in the right headspace.
By pulling on her white sweatsuit in the middle of Tuesday night’s Olympic gymnastics meet, and by doing it with a gold medal hanging in the balance, Biles might very well have redefined the mental health discussion that’s been coursing through sports for the past year.
Michael Phelps, winner of a record 23 gold medals and now retired, has long been open about his own mental health struggles. Phelps has said he contemplated suicide after the 2012 Olympics while wracked with depression. Now an analyst for NBC’s swimming coverage, he said watching Biles struggle “broke my heart.”
Read:Tokyo Olympics 2020: Turkmenistan Wins its First Olympic Medal
“Mental health over the last 18 months is something people are talking about,” Phelps said. “We’re human beings. Nobody is perfect. So yes, it is OK not to be OK.”
Biles joins some other high-profile athletes in the Olympic space — overwhelmingly females — who have been talking openly about a topic that had been taboo in sports for seemingly forever.
— Tennis player Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open, never went to Wimbledon and, after her early exit in Tokyo this week, conceded that the Olympic cauldron was a bit too much to handle.
— American sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson made no secret of the issues she faced as she prepared for an Olympic journey that never happened. She said she used marijuana to help mask the pain of her birth mother’s death, to say nothing of the pressure of the 100 meters.
— Dutch cyclist Tom Dumoulin left training camp in January to clear his head, saying he was finding it “very difficult for me to know how to find my way as Tom Dumoulin the cyclist.” He resumed training in May; on Wednesday, he won a silver medal in the men’s individual time trials.
— Liz Cambage, a WNBA player who competes for Australia, pulled out of the Olympics a week before they opened because of anxiety over entering a controlled COVID bubble in Tokyo that would have kept her friends and family away.
“Relying on daily medication to control my anxiety is not the place I want to be right now. Especially walking into competition on the world’s biggest sporting stage,” she wrote on social media.
Biles, though, took things to a new level — one that now makes it thinkable to do what had been almost unthinkable only 24 hours before. She stepped back, assessed the situation and realized it would not be healthy to keep going.
On Wednesday, she pulled out of the all-around competition to focus on her mental well-being.
“I have to do what’s right for me and focus on my mental health, and not jeopardize my health and well-being,” a tearful Biles said after the Americans won the silver medal in team competition. She said she recognized she was not in the right headspace hours before the competition began.
“It was like fighting all those demons,” she said.
The International Olympic Committee, aware of the struggles young athletes face, increased its mental health resources ahead of the Tokyo Games. Psychologists and psychiatrists are onsite in the Olympic village and established a “Mentally Fit Helpline” as a confidential health support service available before, during and for three months after the Games.
Read:Tokyo records record virus cases days after Olympics begin
The 24-hour hotline is a free service that offers in more than 70 languages clinical support, structured short-term counseling, practical support and, if needed, guidance to the appropriate IOC reporting mechanisms in the case of harassment and/or abuse.
The IOC-developed Athlete365 website surveyed more than 4,000 athletes in early 2020, and the results led the IOC to shift its tone from sports performance and results to mental health and uplifting the athlete’s voices.
Content was created for various social media platforms to feature current Olympians championing mental heath causes. And the Olympic State of Mind series on Olympics.com shares compilations of mental health stories and podcasts.
“Are we doing enough? I hope so. I think so,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said Wednesday. “But like everyone in the world, we are doing more on this issue.”
Naoko Imoto, a swimmer at the 1996 Atlanta Games, is a consultant on gender equity for the Tokyo Olympic Committee. She said Osaka’s admission in early June about mental-health struggles represented an opening for a discussion largely avoided.
“In Japan, we still don’t talk about mental health,” Imoto said. “I don’t think there’s enough of an understanding on mental health, but I think there are a lot of athletes coming out right now and saying it is common.”
Australian swimmer Jack McLoughlin choked back tears after winning the silver medal in the 400-meter freestyle Sunday, describing how the pressures of training during a pandemic while also pursuing an engineering degree nearly caused him to quit the sport.
“That’s all to my family and friends. They really helped me out, I was really struggling,” McLoughlin said. “I train up to 10, 11 times a week, so to do that when you are not 100% sure you’re actually going to get where you want to be is pretty hard.”
Particularly with the world watching. John Speraw, coach of the U.S. men’s volleyball team and the son of a psychologist, hired a specialist to assist his athletes when he coached at UC Irvine. He was an assistant on two Olympic teams before advancing to be the head coach for the Rio Games. There, he noticed his players were posting on Facebook — during the actual opening ceremony.
“To me, it was the most striking,” he said. “I think we are very conscious of the increased scrutiny and external pressure and expectations that it places on our athletes.”
Thriveworks, a counseling, psychology, and psychiatry services with more than 300 locations, found that one in three elite athletes suffer from anxiety and depression. In an analysis of more than 18,000 data points from print, online, broadcast and social media sources covering track and field, swimming, tennis, gymnastics and soccer, 69% of negative mentions were about female athletes compared to 31% about male athletes.
It showed that when the focus is on an individual athlete, coverage becomes less enthusiastic with a 29% negative tone that exemplifies the public pressure and criticism athletes face, said Kim Plourde, a licensed clinical social worker at Thriveworks who works with elite athletes through the Alliance of Social Workers in Sport.
Read:Naomi Osaka eliminated from Tokyo Olympics tennis tournament
“Female athletes have to manage a different level of expectations from themselves, coaches, other athletes, media, and fans ranging from their physical appearance to their performance,” Plourde said.
Jenny Rissveds of Sweden was the youngest women’s cross-country mountain biking champion when she won gold in Rio at 22. A year later, two deaths in her family triggered depression she still deals with. Rissveds failed to win a second consecutive gold, finishing 14th in Tokyo, but she was elated to be done with competition.
“I’m just so f—-ing happy that it’s over,” she said. “Not just the race. But all these years, to not have to carry that title any more. I have a name and I hope that I can be Jenny now and not the Olympic champion, because that is a heavy burden.
“I hope that I will be left alone now.”
Medical student’s hanging body found in Dhaka
The hanging body of a medical student was recovered from her house in Niketan area of the city on Saturday.
The deceased was identified as Faria Haider, 21, daughter of Alam Haider. She was a 1st year student of a Malaysian medical college.
Read: Teen commits suicide after failing SSC examination
Father of the deceased Alam Haider said Faria went to sleep after having dinner and around 8 am they found her body hanging from the ceiling at her room.
She was immediately rushed to a local hospital around 9:30 am and then to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH) where doctors pronounced her dead.
Faria was continuing her medical studies online.
Read: Student 'commits suicide' after failing Dakhil exam
Inspector of DMCH police camp Bacchu Mia said the body was sent to morgue for an autopsy.
Over 61 percent of 18-25s suffering from depression during pandemic
Some 61.2 percent of young people, aged 18-25, have been suffering from depression during the COVID-19 pandemic, and among them 3.7 percent have attempted suicide.
It was revealed in a survey conducted by Aachol Foundation, a student oriented non-profit social organization. The foundation's aim is to create awareness among students about taking care of their mental health. It works primarily to make students aware of mental health and to build them into a skilled, efficient workforce.
The survey report was formally disclosed at a virtual press conference on Saturday. Among others, Tansen Rose, founder and president of the Aachol Foundation, Mental health specialist and play therapist Mushtaq Ahmed Imran and officials of the Foundation attended the virtual press conference.
Last March, the Aachol Foundation conducted a survey on Suicidal rate during corona situation, which found that about 49% of those who committed suicide were young girls and boys, ages between 18- 35.
Also read: Covid patient ‘commits suicide’ in Satkhira
To find out the reasons for the rising suicide rate among the young people, the Aachol Foundation conducted a survey titled " thoughts of young people on Suicide and Mental Health" from June 1 to 15, this year. The aim of the survey was to identify reasons behind of committing suicide and finding a way out and finally, it is important to emphasize that everyone take initiative for mental health.
A total of 2,026 youths, both girls and boys, took part in the survey. The largest group of participants in the survey was 1,720 young people aged 18-25 or 84.9 percent.
A total of 243 people aged 26-30 took part in the survey which is 12 percent of the survey. In addition, 63 people aged 31-35 occupied 3.1 percent of the survey. Among them, the number of women was 1293 or 63.8 percent, while the number of male was 731 or 37.1 per cent and the third sex was 0.10 per cent.
Of the 2,026 young people participated surveyed, only 787 (38.6) percent said they did not suffer from depression. However, 1,239 young boys and girls ( 61.2 percent) said they were suffering from depression. Among the participants, 55.7 percent said they don’t get anyone beside them to share their depression or emotional turmoil.
Also read: Bangladeshi brothers who killed family in Texas were suffering from ‘depression’
According to the survey, 49.9 percent of young people did not think of suicide but the remaining 50.1 percent thought of committing suicide. Among them, 21.3 percent thought of committing suicide during the corona period. Some 38.1 percent of people thought of suicide but did not attempt suicide. But 8.3 percent thought of suicide, they prepared suicide materials but came back and 3.7 percent of young people tried to commit suicide but they failed.
Commenting on the survey, Tansen Rose, founder and president of the Aachol Foundation, said: "young people are the Craftsman to build the country of the future. When young people are suicidal tendency or mentally depressed, it is definitely a bad signal for the country,” he said.
Rather, the problem must be solved by finding out the reasons why a young person has suicidal tendency or is emotionally disturbed, he added.