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Amani Health unveils ‘Speak Up Now’ to tackle trauma, abuse in children

Tele-therapy health company, Amani Health have launched a ‘Speak Up Now’ campaign to help education, enlighten school pupils about behavioural changes, sex abuse, trauma, anxiety and other negative vices that affect younger people in the society. Speaking about the campaign, the founder of Amani Health Oluwarotimi Fasuyi, explained that the goal of the “Speak Up Now” campaign is to educate, enlighten and help students develop an understanding of their emotional, behavioural, social, and psychological wellbeing and encourage them to prioritize their own mental well-being.

“Speak Up Now” campaign will consist of a series of interactive and engaging activities, workshops and events designed to educate and enlighten students about reducing societal stigma surrounding mental health, having healthy school-life balance, identifying negative behavioral patterns among children such as trauma, anxiety, abuse, suicide, social isolation, aggression, violence, stress, neglect, domestic violence, bullying, peer influence, academic challenges etc. and how they can seek help if needed.

We believe that prioritizing mental health education for students is crucial to creating a more positive and healthy learning environment and can also help prevent the development of serious mental health problems such as suicide, academic challenges, anxiety, depression, aggression, violence etc. By educating students how to recognize and manage their emotions. Fasuyi stated that despite recent discussions of mental health challenges and well-being caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the stigma around visiting a therapist persists in Africa, and this can be attributed to cultural biases and poor sensitization and awareness by relevant bodies saddled with the responsibility of demystifying this subject. However, the shift to digital has helped in improving receptiveness to what was once stigmatized in many climes.

Today, people dealing with mental or psychological challenges can privately engage and consult with a global network of therapists and counsellors at the comfort and privacy of their homes, providing an excellent opportunity to develop a platform like Amani Health to provide these benefits and more to end users. According to data submitted by the Child Protection Network of Lagos State Ministry of Youths and Social Development, Lagos State recorded over 2,514 cases of child’s abuse in 2020 and 520 cases in 2021.

The data further said that sexual (defilement, rape and assault) abuse of children share the highest occurrence at 1005 and 213 in 2020 and 2021 respectively, followed by physical violence which the figure was put at 376 and 94 in both years correspondingly. Revealing the alarming rise in the cases of child abuse in the state, the data alerted that no fewer than 2,674 children suffered child abuse menace since 2020 till date.

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