CHILDREN AND STRESS IN BOTSWANA: CAUSES, IMPACT, PROGRAMS AND THE WAY FORWARD

Abstract

Children in contemporary societies, just like adults experience numerous stressful situations or circumstances. However, little has been documented about children and stress in Botswana. Understanding and documenting the impact of stress on children is important because distress has immediate and long term negative effects on children if relevant and adequate help is not provided to the affected children. The stressful situations that children encounter can emanate from the various environments that children live in. These environments include the micro, mezzo and the macro levels of society. This paper interrogates two causes of stress on children that emanate from the micro level as well as the impact of such causes on children’s wellbeing.   The causes of stress for children analysed in this paper are: poverty and domestic violence.  The authors are more interested in poverty and domestic violence because these are among the major social problems in the country. In addition poverty and domestic violence are gendered because the most affected are females, who also happen to be burdened with the care of children. The paper also examines existing programs and other strategies (both formal and informal) that assist children to cope with stress and charts the way forward in relation to addressing the causes of stress on children as well as identification of  practice and research gaps that need to be sealed.