Parents’ fights depress the youth — Clinical Psychologist

Out of the about 100 young people who visit a Clinical Psychologist in Accra every month, 80 present with depression, anxiety or stress or a combination of all.

Often, the source of the problem seems to be stressed relationships within their homes, especially between their parents.

It includes broken homes.

The Clinical/Counselling Psychologist, Rev Father Anthony Afriyie Amponsah, is therefore asking parents to build a good rapport with their children and be observant in order that they will notice when their children needed help and offer the necessary support.

Rev. Amponsah in a chat with The Mirror in Accra on Wednesdsy explained that one of the difficulties encountered in offering counselling and treatment was his inability to involve the parents of his clients who were often the source of their children’s problems because of client confidentiality.

“Once the client does not give the go ahead to contact a person in relation to the case, and there is no criminality involved, we respect that entirely,” he explained.

He said that investigations often found that “some of these clients have parents fighting at home, they feel lonely, rejected and this affects them badly”.

“Some of these clients end up doing drugs etc., in their bid to find an escape but unfortunately this only compounds their problem,” he said.

Rev. Father Tony said some of those young people sought help after they felt rejected by their partners, some of whom were gays and lesbians.

The approach adopted with such relationships according to him, was not to stop clients from having such relations but to counsel them in a way that may help them to stop.

“What we realise is that many of them are cajoled into such relationships. They for instance go to school with problems from home and when they get people offering themselves as father or mother figures who are also into such relationships, they manage to influence them”, he explained.

On substance abuse, Rev. Father Amponsah said some of the young clients were referred to him from other health facilities for substance abuse, including cannabis.

“The worrisome thing is that some of them are not even aware that they had taken drugs because they attend parties where drugs are laced in different kinds of ways including as sweets and the next some of them see is themselves in hospital,” he said.

Rev. Amponsah said he believed that the extent of drug abuse among students could be more alarming because not all cases were reported, and the cases he was seeing were significant.

He called for more education and information on the subject in order to make young people aware of some of those tricks in order that they do not fall prey.

Writer’s E-mail: doreen.hammond@graphic.com.gh/aamakai@rocketmail.com