By Ernest Bako WUBONTO
The rising incident of bullying in senior high schools (SHS) has shown a growing trend of unaddressed mental health issues among the young adults in society, according to Campaign Against Privatisation and Commercialisation of Education (CAPCOE).
With the growing burden of mental health disorders in society receiving little attention, the youths are beginning to demonstrate its implications, resulting in bullying and making the schools unsafe.
In recent years, cases of bullying among school children at the pre-tertiary level have become a weekly phenomenon, with some resulting in death of victims while survivors go through trauma and live in constant fear.
A careful analysis of these incidents pointed to symptoms of mental health issues caused by substance abuse, childhood stress, childhood depression, trauma, nutritional deficiency, alcoholism, anxiety and other psychological factors. These factors push the learners to seek solace and comfort in bullying to show their superiority and dominance where they derive satisfaction from what they term neglect and isolation.
The convenor for CAPCOE, Richard Kwashie Kovey, emphasised that teachers and managers of these schools are also not being spared. There has been reported cases of teachers’ eye being plugged out by students, exacting machete wounds and vandalising of school and personal properties of teachers and school heads. Most of these cases involving teachers were provoked by mere action of trying to reform these deviant learners during preps, contact hours or social gatherings the students try to miss.
The Ghana Education Service (GES), in the heat of event, came up with unified code of conduct for students to tame and address these non-conforming behaviours in schools. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to provide a cure for the pandemic.
“There is an urgent need to equip professionals and school children with the knowledge and skills to address mental health issues,” he said.
He further argued that the situation requires a more holistic approach if it must be nipped in the bud. “We cannot pretend to be addressing it using the law and punitive measures if the underlying factors are not addressed adequately.”
In 2021, more than 48 thousand cases of mental illness were registered in facilities under the Christian Health Association of Ghana (CHAG). These shows that the cases in reality are much higher and affect the youthful population, with majority being school children.
Mental health is a critical component of theoverall well-being of individuals yet remains a neglected area in many societies and institutions due to the stigma, limited resources and inadequate knowledge.
Addressing bullying in schools
In the interim, there is the need for deployment of task force using security services to monitor and control non-conforming behaviour on campuses day and night while teachers concentrate on teaching and imparting good morals in the students.
According to Mr. Kovey, the first step toward addressing the problem is redirecting their energy and thought into positive ventures. One would attest to the fact that most of these bullies show great interest in technology.
“There is the need to develop a comprehensive education curriculum that prioritise robotics, coding and programming and development of AI technology at all levels to engage them in positive competition toward creation of the best soft and hardware for the job market,” he emphasised.
This approach is capable of giving hope not only to the bullies, but also to all learners as it meets their goals and aspirations.
Secondly, the curriculum must focus more on job creation rather than job seeking, especially at the tertiary level. As technology is taking up the job market – reducing the number of employees required, it is appropriate to train students to be the developers of these tools and not the end-users. A curriculum that addresses these gaps would automatically tame indecent behaviour in our schools.
Institutionalising Parents Teacher Associations (PTA) to take control of upbringing of children while working closely with child right advocates to find a lasting solution to the problem.
All these requires high investment in the sector, knowing very well that it has direct cost benefit if the investment is well targeted.
A collaboration among Ghana Health Service, GES, Ghana TVET Service and GTEC to intensify sensitisation on mental health issues, the underlying causes and dangers, while providing counselling and rehabilitation services would go a long way to address learners who are already addicted to drugs and are battling with psychological problems.
