Mental Health
For every child, mental wellness
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- Tiếng Việt
The Challenges
Being mentally healthy gives us the ability to enjoy life and cope with the bad days as well as good.
Our mental health reflects our emotional, psychological and social well-being. For children, it is vital to understand and manage emotions, form nurturing connections, play, learn and grow.
But for many children and adolescents in today’s world, mental health problems are often a hidden burden that weigh heavily on their shoulders. Viet Nam is no exception. Here, parents also struggle to recognize the emotional or behavioural issues encountered by their child.
One-in-five adolescents in Viet Nam experiences mental health challenges, with anxiety and depression particularly acute. Yet, only 5 per cent of parents acknowledge that their adolescents needed mental health support.
The ups and downs of our mental health are a daily reality and nurturing positive mental health is a life-long pursuit that must begin from the earliest days. This starts at home. Safe and nurturing environments are fundamental to the emotional and psychological development of children and adolescents, yet more than seven-in-10 children aged 1-14 years’ experience violent discipline at home.
Violence is also felt at school and even online. One-in-five children and adolescents are victims of harassment from peers and cyberbullying, but three-quarters are unaware of where to seek help.
Poverty, violence, gender social norms, pressured learning environments and life stress events all contribute to emotional and psychological distress for young people. These pressures were amplified by COVID-19, with at least 30 per cent of school children experiencing stress, anxiety or depression due to health-related social restrictions during and coming out of the pandemic.
The Solutions
Positive mental health means better life outcomes for children. Getting it right early is critical.
That is why UNICEF promotes mental well-being and a preventative approach, strengthening coping skills before mental health challenges arise and connecting adolescents with support services when help is needed.
At home, UNICEF’s parenting programme supports mothers and fathers to nurture good mental health through positive parenting skills. At school, we promote the strengthening of socio-emotional learning within the national curriculum from preschool age through secondary, build children’s resilience, confidence and self-esteem, introduce health promoting extra-curricular activities such as sports and clubs, and work to ensure every school has a trained counsellor to provide psychosocial services to students.
In the health system, we support policy development in step with building the capacity of health workers and providing them with tools to prevent, identify, refer, and manage mental health challenges among children and adolescents. And in communities, we champion mental health together with youth networks to break down taboos and increase knowledge and awareness. In the digital world, we provide online resources for learning on mental health, tools to stay safe online and raise parents’ awareness to better safeguard their child’s online safety. To realize a sustainable response to the mental health challenge, we support decision-makers with data and evidence on children and adolescents’ mental health concerns and service quality to make informed policy decisions.
You can be the change for children!
Help UNICEF provide children and families with critical essential services for health and nutrition, education and protection.
Impact
Taking action now will create resilient future generations. That is why UNICEF is working with partners so, by 2026, up to 10 million adolescents will have benefited from trained facilitators and teachers on promoting good mental health. Communities will be reached with information to better understand mental health and how to support children and adolescents. Social welfare, child protection and frontline workers in UNICEF-supported provinces will be better able to help children facing mental well-being challenges, including through enhanced community-based early screening, prevention and treatment of mental health issues. Additionally, 270,000 mothers and fathers will benefit from parenting skills to create responsive and nurturing environments for children.