By Esnart Chingwalu

A plea has gone out to parents and guardians to provide proper guidance and psychosocial support to their children in a bid to enhance children’s mental health.

One of the country’s child rights activists Amos Chibwana said this when reacting to the increase in number of suicide cases among minors in the country in the past weeks.

Speaking to YONECO FM Online, Chibwana said this could be as a result of lack of proper guidance which mostly comes when there is no openness and proper relationship between parents and children.

“Lack of parental care and aggression are some of the factors that are contributing to children from committing suicide which needs to be looked into,” Chibwana said.

“Most parents also leaves the responsibility of taking care of the family in the hands of the children which brings unanswerable questions as to how they are going to feed the families.”

Chibwana added that disagreements between children and parents could also act as a large contribution factor to the problem.

“Some parents also become so angry with their children for no tangible reasons which threaten children’s life and this makes them to lose trust in their own parent’s security and ends in committing suicide,” he said.

Chibwana has since called on parents to embrace good parenting skills which will help in the proper nurturing and grooming of children.