. The circumstances in which children and adolescents live have a significant impact on their mental health — both in childhood and adulthood.
Where a child is under the care of a parent or caregiver, the primary responsibility to provide for the child’s mental health lies with the parents. However, where the parent cannot afford appropriate services or is otherwise absent or unable, as is the case with many South Africans, then children and adolescents in these circumstances have a direct entitlement to receive mental health care services from the state.
Therefore, all of us exist on this spectrum, and each of us moves across the spectrum depending on life’s challenges and experiences as well as the extent to which our immediate and external environments support our full potential and realisation. Most of the children and adolescents in South Africa reside in townships, informal settlements, rural and peri-urban areas — at the height of unemployment, poverty, and food insecurity. This is often compounded by overpopulation, gender-based violence, substance abuse, inadequate infrastructure and inequitable access to social services.