At the G20 Interfaith Forum (IF20) on Tuesday in Cape Town, attendees broke off from the main ballroom and attended some smaller discussion groups, one tackling “Addressing Youth and Mental Health”.

The IF20 forum convenes religious leaders, civil society organisations, government officials, multilateral institutions, and scholars to explore collaborative solutions to pressing global challenges.

Tuesday’s discussion sought to explore analytic work and policy proposals in the face of challenges often cited by the youth, including employment, quality education, and addressing numerous challenges to mental health.

The discussion was moderated by Andrea Kaufman, Director, Faith & External Engagement, World Vision International, and Angela Nielsen Redding, Executive Director, Radiance Foundation.

The moderators set the scene with Redding explaining that at Radiance Foundation, they looked at Gallup World Poll data, a global network of quality data collection built to measure public opinion, which often asked questions about religiosity and well-being, but “they had never compared the relationship between the answers to those questions”.

“We funded a historical look at the last 12 years to look at what is the relationship between personal and societal well-being to religiosity, and in addition, we did a meta-analysis of over 65 medical studies and psycho-social studies, and what they found is that the spirituality-well-being link is clear.

“It is unequivocal. There is clearly a link between higher levels of religiosity, higher levels of religion being important to people and better well-being outcomes,” Redding said.

“People who are religious throughout the world are more likely to be civically engaged. They have higher outcomes on positive experience, social support, and more involvement in their communities, despite more negative experience.

“But here is what is more interesting, in communities where religiosity is important, those effects are stronger, and in countries where you have fewer religious people, those effects are diminished or even decreased entirely. In countries within the continent of Africa, the well-being-spirituality link is even stronger.”

She said that when that is coupled with their research, they have found that there are a few key indicators for resilient societies, and that being freedom of religion and media freedom. She said that according to the Pew Research Centre, 84% of humankind is affiliated with religion, and that number is set to increase based on basic demographics.

“A lot of the work that we do is what we are being told about religion, from a communications perspective. We did an AI-enabled study of over 30 million pieces of digital content, and we found that 74% of faith-related digital content was negative or extreme in nature, including 11% which was hate speech. That remaining percent was just informational.

“Only 6% of digital content is both personal and positive. There is a huge disconnect between the personal lived experience of people who are religious, and the communities where religion is important, and what you see represented in the media.”

Redding explained that it applies to mental health, whereas people who are religious and less likely to be depressed, suffer from anxiety and other mental illnesses, isolation, and other things.

Other panellists included Sandile Hlayisi, Church of Scientology, Scientology Volunteer Ministers, Doug Fountain, Executive Director, Christian Connections for International Health, Rogelio P. Lelis Jr., Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) Technical Advisor -ACWAY, Iraq.

Fountain highlighted that in their network, they are focusing on mental health, and a vital thing that can be done is to advocate for youth mental health inclusion in national policy frameworks, “both in health, and anything that looks like it affects the youth”.

“You want the youth of the world to shape these programmes, and if they are not designing these programmes, then what the hell are we doing?”

Lelis Jr. also touched on accessibility and availability of access to health services for the youth. He said that there seems to be a misunderstanding in how it is tackled, and that “everyone who needs mental health support needs to go right away to a specialised service, when in fact, there are a lot of things that can be delivered on a community level”.

“We can support each other, and that includes faith and religious leaders. That is a way to diversify services because, no matter if we want to have professionals, there is just not enough (to accommodate everyone).”

Later, he added that it is important to mobilise the youth and to meet them in the spaces where they are.

“Young people are ready and capable; they just need to be given a space in order for them to learn.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za

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