By Jessie Pinchoff, Karen Austrian, Faith Mbushi, Population Council & Julie Mwabe, Kenya Executive Office of the President, Policy and Strategy Unit

"I had anxiety because we left school when we were just about to sit for the exams, and then we left school being told that we wouldn't know when we would go back to school. So, it was giving me stress because I wonder when we would go back to school and when would it be announced"

Adolescent boy, 14 years, Nairobi

The first case of COVID-19 reached Kenya in March 2020, triggering a national response, including closure of businesses and schools and strict curfews. While these measures may have saved lives, they also had widespread unintended secondary impacts on Kenyan households. Globally, researchers are finding higher-than-normal reports of depression, anxiety, and other mental health concerns. In Kenya specifically, recent news reports highlight worrisome trends of fires in schools, potentially linked with increased stress and difficulty adjusting as schools reopen. However, there is limited research available in African contexts on what works to address adolescent mental health, and the long-term impacts of the pandemic on education and mental health outcomes in the region are unknown.

Credit: Marcel Crozet/ILO

Population Council researchers, in collaboration with the Kenyan National Emergency Response Committee for COVID-19 and the Kenyan Executive Office of the President's Policy and Strategy Unit (PASU), set out to explore this by surveying adult–adolescent pairs across four locations in Kenya. The findings presented here are for three of these sites: Kisumu, Kilifi and Nairobi. The first adolescent surveys were conducted between June and August 2020 (during school closures), with a follow up survey in February 2021 (after schools reopened). We sampled 1,022 adolescents in Nairobi, 1,063 in Kilifi, and 602 in Kisumu, in a ratio of 1:3 male to female participants. Survey questions covered topics including remote learning and school, economic impact, food insecurity, and COVID-19 beliefs and behaviours. Qualitative surveys were also conducted.

At the time of the first survey, in mid-2020, all schools were closed. Almost all adolescents surveyed (85%) were enrolled in school before COVID-19 related closures, and most (80%) were doing some learning from home, including reviewing documents from the school, reading 'other' books, or learning via mobile phone. The first survey found that over a third (36%) of adolescents reported depressive symptoms (as measured by the PHQ-2 scale), with the highest rates among older adolescent boys (15-19 years).

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GEM Report | June 1, 2021 at 2:59 pm | Tags: coronavirus, covid-19, covid19, kenya, mental health, target 4.1, youth | Categories: Out-of-school children, Youth | URL: https://wp.me/pDwCk-3Ig
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