Chil­dren were the fo­cus as this coun­try com­mem­o­rat­ed World Men­tal Health Day yes­ter­day.

The theme for this year’s ob­ser­vances was Men­tal Health is a uni­ver­sal hu­man right.

NGC Med­ical Lim­it­ed or­gan­ised a walk and a sym­po­sium for pri­ma­ry school pupils and sec­ondary school stu­dents in Port-of-Spain.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, a psy­chol­o­gist at NGC Med­ical Lim­it­ed, Idrees Ho­sein, said the goal of the walk was to raise aware­ness among the youth about the im­por­tance of men­tal health, in par­tic­u­lar their own.

“We are host­ing a walk to pro­mote aware­ness of men­tal health, par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ing chil­dren. Our goal is to ex­pose them to the sig­nif­i­cance of World Men­tal Health Day and men­tal health in gen­er­al, pro­vid­ing them with valu­able in­sights and cop­ing skills for the fu­ture,” Ho­sein said.

Giv­en the cur­rent chal­lenges of crime and vi­o­lence in the coun­try, Ho­sein ex­plained how bad­ly trau­ma im­pacts in­di­vid­u­als, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren.

“Trau­ma is a cru­cial as­pect of a child’s up­bring­ing, and we will be con­duct­ing lec­tures to ex­plain the signs and av­enues for seek­ing help, as well as strate­gies for self-man­age­ment,” he said.

Fol­low­ing the walk, the young­sters par­tic­i­pat­ed in a sym­po­sium where men­tal health is­sues, care and re­sources were dis­cussed.