Childhood is a time of rapid development. The experiences we have during childhood help to shape the adults we will become.
Mental health and wellbeing is established early in life and provides children with the foundation for all aspects of their development including physical, educational, social, emotional and cognitive development.
Parents, carers and other significant adults play an important role in their child’s development and in building and protecting their mental health and wellbeing. In many cases, children who have good mental health carry it with them through life.
However, there is a small proportion of children in South Africa (around one in seven), who will experience a mental health condition during childhood, and we need to better support these children. Given that half of all mental health conditions in adulthood begin before the age of fourteen.1 – we know that the time to act is early, during childhood.
Kenanao Foundation is working to raise community awareness about the mental health needs of children so that the people closest and most influential in a child’s life – their parents, carers and other significant adults including professionals – can notice the signs and symptoms of poor mental health earlier and seek the appropriate support sooner.
For parents
- For more on how mental health conditions present in children, visit Kenanao Foundation's Healthy Families website.
- Take the child mental health checklist to measure a broad range of social, emotional or behavioural difficulties your child may be experiencing.
- Get tips for building your child’s resilience.
For professionals
- Our practice guide, Building resilience in children aged 0–12 aims to assist practitioners to promote children’s resilience and raise community awareness about it more broadly.
- From August 2021, Kenanao Foundation will lead a new National Education Initiative with support from headspace and Early Childhood South Africa, with funding from the South African Government Department of Health.
