The Kenyan media is awash with cases of young people taking their own lives with the latest case being that of a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide after allegedly being humiliated by her teacher for soiling her dress during her periods.
That act of humiliation left her so depressed that life lost meaning to her.
It was a shocking case and scores of Kenyans found it hard to wrap their heads around why a teenager with a promising life ahead of her would do what she did.
Statistics around suicide are chilling.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has ranked suicide as the second leading cause of deaths among young people in the 15-29 age bracket.
78 percent of these deaths occurred in the low and middle-income countries of the world where Kenya falls.
Why would a young person with so much to look up to opt to put their lives to an end?
A key factor in cases of suicide is depression.
Depression is spawned by pressure coming from the environment that the young men and women are living in.
It could be pressure from parents, peers and even social media to be a certain way. Young people operate in an environment defined by competing pressures.
Pressure, when it comes from parents, can be particularly devastating.
Being talked down to in a manner that makes them feel worthless can trigger suicidal thoughts in young people.
"Parents are too busy living their own lives to know what is going on in their children’s lives, while some try too hard to create the ideal world for their children and fail," Eric Otieno who has survived suicide attempts said.
Dysfunction in families plays a part in moving young people toward suicide.
Mental well-being is fed by a sense of order and love in families. When that order lacks, then suicide becomes an option.
Shibeero Akatsa who is a mental health expert contends that the youth are losing the capacities to process intense emotions be it those triggered by rejection or social pressure.
This inability to process these emotions has been worsened by substance abuse.
When the emotions come up they require internal mechanisms to help one deal with them but since they are lacking those mechanisms they end up committing suicide.
Young people encounter a litany of challenges that they sometimes don't know how to deal with them.
When they don't have someone to talk to them about those challenges and to encourage them not to give in to life's realities, they end up contemplating suicide.
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