Locusts invasion call for unity in tackling our challenges

There is no shortage of bad news in today’s Kenya. Newspaper headlines are drenched in the despair sweeping across the nation with greater intensity than the locusts. Some of these gloomy headlines speak to the scourge of mental illness in the country: students as young as 14 committing suicide due to bad exam results; women slain to death owing to love gone sour and entire generations of young men lost in alcoholism.

Last November, experts from the Ministry of Health revealed that one in four Kenyans suffers from depression or other forms of mental illness. Some of these people resort to deadly acts like murder of lovers or suicide. We must rise to the occasion and offer a helping hand to millions of fellow Kenyans sinking deeper into mental illness.