It was a Tuesday evening, the kind that usually passed without incident in the Mensah household. Efua was in the kitchen finishing up jollof rice, the smell of fried onions and thyme drifting through the corridor, while Kwame sat in the parlour scrolling through the day's news on his phone, half-listening to the television. Their teen son, Nana Yaw, was upstairs, supposedly studying for his WASSCE mock exams.
Nothing about the evening suggested anything was wrong. That's usually how it happens. Nothing suggests anything is wrong, until suddenly, everything is.
Efua noticed it first: Nana Yaw hadn't come down for dinner, and when she went up to check on him, she found him sitting on the floor of his room, back against the bed, phone face-down beside him, eyes red and swollen. He wasn't sobbing loudly. He was just sitting there, quiet, hollow, staring at nothing in particular.
When she asked what was wrong, he said the words that would change how the Mensah family: "I don't know why I feel like this. I just feel tired of everything, and I don't know how to say it without you thinking I'm being dramatic."
That single sentence carries the weight of what so many young people are silently carrying. Not one big traumatic event, but an accumulation of pressure, expectation, comparison, and unspoken pain that eventually spills over.
Kwame and Efua spent that night talking, and what unfolded over the following weeks became a journey of understanding the real, layered reasons why so many young people are breaking down before they even get the chance to become adults.
This is their story, and within it, 24 truths that every parent, guardian, and married couple raising children needs to sit with.
## The Weight of Expectation
The first thing they realised, once they slowed down enough to actually listen to their son, was how heavy the word "expectation" had become in his world.
1 - Pressure to excel academically without room for failure; Nana Yaw admitted he'd been terrified of disappointing them since primary school, not because they punished poor grades harshly, but because he'd built an entire identity around being "the smart one."
2 - Children absorbing their parents' unfulfilled dreams as their own responsibility to fulfil, whether that's becoming a doctor, an engineer, or the first to travel abroad.
3 - Comparison to cousins, classmates, and church friends: the innocent-sounding "So-and-so's daughter passed with distinction, why can't you?" that lands far harder than intended.
4 - The fear of shame: the deeply cultural weight of not wanting to embarrass the family name, which many young people carry like a stone in their chest long before they understand what it even means.
As Kwame listened to his son describe these pressures, he remembered his own father saying similar things to him decades ago, and how he'd simply pushed through it, assuming that was just what growing up required.
But Efua gently pointed out something important: what her husband called "pushing through," their son was calling "breaking down." The world hadn't gotten easier; it had simply added new pressures on top of the old ones, and nobody had updated the emotional toolkit young people were given to cope.
The second cluster of reasons emerged when Nana Yaw finally opened his phone and showed his parents his social media feed; something Efua admitted she'd never actually sat down to look at with him.
5 - The relentless exposure to curated, unrealistic lifestyles online, where every peer seemed to be travelling, thriving, or celebrating something, creating a constant undercurrent of "I'm falling behind."
6 - Cyberbullying and public humiliation, which spreads faster and cuts deeper than the playground teasing of previous generations ever could.
7 - The addictive design of social platforms themselves, quietly reshaping attention spans, sleep patterns, and self-worth metrics tied to likes and comments.
8 - The loneliness that paradoxically comes from being "connected" to hundreds of people online while having almost no one to call when things actually fall apart.
Efua sat with her son that night, scrolling through his feed together, and for the first time understood why he seemed to check his phone the moment he woke up, as though bracing for something. It wasn't addiction in the way she'd assumed — it was survival, a constant monitoring of his social standing in a world that never really switches off.
The next set of reasons hit closer to home, and required Kwame and Efua to look inward rather than outward.
9 - Growing up in households where emotional expression was discouraged, where children learn early that crying invites scolding rather than comfort.
10 - The cultural habit of dismissing mental health struggles as spiritual weakness or simple laziness, leaving young people ashamed to even name what they're feeling.
11- The absence of safe adults to talk to, not because parents don't love their children, but because fear, punishment, or busyness has taught children that certain conversations aren't welcome.
12 - The burden of being the "strong one" in the family, often placed on eldest children or those perceived as capable, robbing them of the permission to also struggle.
Kwame admitted something difficult that night to his wife: that he'd been raised to believe boys don't cry, and without realising it, he'd been quietly passing that same lesson to Nana Yaw through small comments over the years. It wasn't malicious. It was inherited. But inherited patterns, left unexamined, become the very cracks children fall through.
13 - Economic anxiety — teenagers today are acutely aware of unemployment rates, rising costs, and uncertain futures, and many feel pressure to "figure life out" long before they're equipped to.
14 - Blurred line between childhood and adulthood, where teenagers are expected to have life plans, side hustles, and five-year goals while still navigating puberty and identity formation.
15 - Erosion of unstructured play and rest, replaced by packed schedules of extra classes, tutorials, and enrichment programs meant to give children an edge.
16 - Sleep deprivation, often overlooked, but deeply connected to irritability, poor concentration, and emotional instability in young people juggling schoolwork, chores, and screen time.
17 - Instability many children feel from inconsistent parenting — affection one day, harsh punishment the next, with no predictable emotional ground to stand on.
18 - Witnessing unresolved conflict between parents, which teaches children that love is unstable and unsafe, even if no one ever says a harsh word directly to them.
19 - Trauma of comparison within blended or extended family systems, where children feel like guests rather than fully belonging.
20 - Financial stress trickling down — children sensing tension over school fees or bills, and quietly absorbing guilt for simply existing and needing things.
21 - Absence of identity exploration — many young people are never asked who they want to be, only what they must become.
22 - Untreated grief, whether from the loss of a loved one, a move, a divorce, or a friendship that ended without closure, grief that nobody ever circled back to address.
23 - Bullying or rejection from peer groups, something children rarely disclose because they fear it reflects poorly on them rather than on those responsible.
24 - Nobody had ever asked them, sincerely and without judgment, "How are you really doing?"
That last one struck Efua the hardest. She realised she'd asked her son "How was school?" a thousand times, but had rarely asked, "How are you feeling about your life right now?" One is a status update. The other is an invitation.
Breakdowns in young people rarely come from one single cause. They accumulate quietly, like water filling a cup drop by drop, until it simply overflows. No parent causes this alone, and no parent can fix it alone either. But awareness changes everything.
Practical steps matter more than perfect intentions.
Set aside device-free time weekly where conversation isn't about performance, grades, or chores, but simply about life.
Normalise saying "I don't know how to handle this feeling" as a family, modelled by parents themselves, not just expected of children.
Watch for withdrawal, irritability, or sudden silence as signals rather than teenage moodiness to be dismissed.
Replace "How was school?" with questions that invite depth — "What was the hardest part of your day?" or "Is there anything you've been carrying that you haven't said out loud?"
