By Anja Nielsen, Patricia Landínez, Rob Jenkins, Zeinab Hijazi, Photo: Unsplash, The European Sting, October 20, 2023
This morning, hundreds of millions of children around the world woke up to a crisis on their doorstep. More than 400 million children are living in areas under conflict; over 36 million children are displaced from their homes; and as many as 1 billion children are living in countries with extreme vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. More than one in five of them are likely to be experiencing a mental health condition, with the risk of long-term consequences for their futures. A groundbreaking new report commissioned by UNICEF shows the high costs of inadequate support for children’s mental health in humanitarian crises, and the significant return on investment of school- and community-based mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) interventions. Every child deserves access to quality education and services that respond to their mental health and psychosocial support needs through schools and other services. Their right to learn, and their future economic prospects, depend on it.
The cost to lives and livelihoods
Humanitarian emergencies and protracted crises can have devastating and long-term consequences for children’s mental health. Exposure to severely distressing or traumatic events, compounded by poor or precarious living conditions and lack of access to basic services during natural or human-made emergency events, constitutes a risk factor for the mental health of children and their caregivers. The failure to address mental health problems at their onset can, in turn, affect children’s development, contribute to poor academic outcomes, and even impact their physical health and social development throughout life.
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