By George Morara
Ignore available evidence on mental health among adolescents and young children at your own peril, Thalia Psychotherapy tells the government and school managers following the fatal Utumishi Academy fire incident.
Through its Mindful for Schools programme, the organization is asking learning institutions to put in place a system that sufficiently identifies strange behaviors among learners and supports them.
Mercy Mwende, Chief Operations Officer at Thalia Psychotherapy, said Kenya has an opportunity to build a model that is practical, affordable and aligned with existing health and education systems.
“We should not wait for another tragedy to ask whether students are okay,” Mwende said. “Mindful for Schools is about helping schools act earlier. It gives teachers tools, gives students safe channels to be heard, gives parents a way to be involved and gives school leaders information they can use before problems escalate.”
Mwende said Thalia Psychotherapy’s broader work has focused on integrating mental health into everyday systems, including hospitals, maternal care and schools.
At the core of what the organization does is a principle: identify early, support early and prevent crisis. Mwende wants schools to apply it to the student wellbeing to avoid dealing with a crisis when it can be stopped before escalating.
“When children’s needs are detected early, families, teachers and health professionals can work together,” she says, emphasizing that above all, learning institutions should pay close attention to evidence-based data on mental health among young people in the country.
Data in the hands of the government highlights the scale of the challenge.
The Kenya National Adolescent Mental Health Survey 2022 (K-NAMHS) conducted by the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC), the University of Queensland and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that 44.3 per cent of adolescents aged 10 to 17 had experienced a mental health problem in the previous 12 months, while 12.2 per cent met the criteria for a mental disorder.
Meant to determine the prevalence of mental disorders among adolescents aged 10-17 years, measure associated risk and protective factors and to examine service use, the same survey found that only 8.7 per cent of adolescents had used any service providing support or counselling for emotional and behavioural problems in the previous year.
Among adolescents with a mental health problem, only 11.1 per cent had accessed services.
Consequently, Thalia Psychotherapy has called for the integration of structured mental health and wellbeing systems in Kenyan schools, following renewed concern over student unrest now becoming rampant in parts of the country.
The organisation says schools must strengthen both physical safety and psychosocial support, warning that discipline alone cannot prevent future crises.
Through its Mindful for Schools programme, Thalia Psychotherapy is proposing a prevention-based model that helps schools identify student distress early, strengthen counselling systems, train teachers, engage parents and provide school leaders with wellbeing data that can guide early intervention.
It was reported that 16 students of Utumishi Girls Academy died and dozens were injured in a dormitory fire. Authorities are investigating the incident, with students reported to have been arrested in connection with suspected arson.
Thalia Psychotherapy says criminal acts must be firmly addressed, but schools also need systems that detect warning signs before distress turns into unrest, violence, self-harm or destruction of property.
“Arson is not protest, and nothing can justify the loss of children’s lives,” says Margaret Wanjiru, Quality Assurance Lead for Mindful for Schools.
However, she argues that if we only authorities will be responding after a school structure such a dormitory has been burnt, then that’s already too late.
“Schools need systems that help them notice distress early, listen to learners safely and act before a situation becomes a crisis,” she reasons.
Wanjiru said Mindful for Schools is designed to support schools to move from purely reactive discipline to early identification and support.
“Schools already track grades, attendance, fees and discipline cases. What is missing is a structured way to track learner wellbeing,” she is saying while analysing the response from the state and school management following the recent Utumishi Academy arson.
She points out that a student may be anxious, bullied, grieving, withdrawn or under pressure, but unless there is a system to identify and support that learner, the school may only notice when the behaviour has already escalated.
Thalia Psychotherapy says this service gap makes schools one of the most practical platforms for early detection and support.
“Most adolescents are in school. That means schools are not just places of learning, they are also the best place to notice when a young person is struggling,” Wanjiru said. “The goal is not to label children. It is to support them early, before distress becomes a crisis.”
The organisation says Mindful for Schools is built around regular student wellbeing checks, teacher training, professional referral pathways, parental engagement and anonymised data that helps school administrators monitor emerging risks.
According to Thalia Psychotherapy, the programme is not meant to replace school discipline, safety regulations or accountability. Instead, it is designed to strengthen them.
“A safe school is not only one with rules. It is also one where students can speak, teachers can recognise distress and administrators can respond early,” Wanjiru added. “Physical safety and emotional safety must go together. A dormitory with poor exits is unsafe. A school where learners fear reporting distress is also unsafe.”
Globally, school-based mental health models are increasingly being adopted as part of education systems.
In England, more than 600 Mental Health Support Teams were operational by Spring 2025, reaching 52 per cent of pupils and learners across more than 10,000 education settings. The programme is being expanded with the goal of giving every school access to specialist mental health support by 2029/30.
In India, the SEHER programme in Bihar showed that trained lay counsellors in secondary schools could improve school climate and health outcomes, including depression, bullying, violence and gender-equity attitudes. Researchers found that the lay-counsellor model had stronger effects than relying on teachers alone, a finding Thalia Psychotherapy says is relevant for Kenya, where teachers are often expected to handle complex psychosocial issues without adequate support.
Other whole-school programmes, including Finland’s KiVa anti-bullying model and the United States’ Positive Action programme, also point to the same conclusion: student wellbeing can be addressed through structured, school-based systems rather than crisis response alone.
The organisation has previously collaborated with Infinite Child Foundation and partners in the health and education sectors under the Maisha Mother programme, an initiative reported to support early screening for developmental disorders, caregiver support, teacher awareness and inclusive education for children with special needs.
“Our collaboration with partners such as Infinite Child Foundation showed us that early identification changes outcomes,” Mwende said.
The organisation is now urging education stakeholders to make learner wellbeing part of school management. It says schools should combine dormitory safety audits with routine wellbeing checks, trained school focal persons, active counselling structures, anonymous reporting channels and professional referral networks.
Boards of Management, school heads, teachers, parents, health professionals and government agencies all have a role to play, the organisation said.
“Students need clear rules and accountability,” Mwende said. “But they also need schools that see them, hear them and know how to respond when something is wrong. If we want safer schools, we must invest in both discipline and wellbeing.”
Thalia Psychotherapy says Mindful for Schools can support schools to build that prevention infrastructure through a model that combines technology, trained personnel and mental health expertise.
The organisation is calling for urgent national conversations on how student wellbeing can be made part of school safety, especially in boarding schools where learners spend long periods away from home.
“Our schools must prepare children for exams, but they must also protect their lives, their minds and their futures,” Wanjiru said. “After Utumishi, the question is no longer whether student mental health belongs in schools. The question is how quickly we can act.”
‘ Este Articulo puede contener información publicada por terceros, algunos detalles de este articulo fueron extraídos de la siguiente fuente: healthbusiness.co.ke ’
