03/23/2026
Many Kenyans, especially young people, are trapped in permanent survival mode, and this is not just an economic problem, it is a mental health crisis.
When your mind is constantly occupied with rent, food, transport, job insecurity, and the fear of tomorrow, the brain shifts into a state of continuous stress. In this state, creativity shuts down. Hope feels unrealistic. Long-term thinking becomes a luxury you cannot afford. Your nervous system is not designed to be in fight-or-flight every day for years.
Calling this exhaustion laziness is both inaccurate and cruel. What looks like a lack of ambition is often burnout. What is labelled as indiscipline is frequently depression masked as fatigue. What is dismissed as “not trying hard enough” is a mind overwhelmed by chronic uncertainty and emotional pressure.
A society that constantly demands resilience without offering relief slowly breaks its people. Human beings need periods of safety, rest, and stability to imagine, plan, and innovate. Without those, survival becomes the goal, not growth. You cannot build vision while your mind is busy putting out fires.
The tragedy is that we are losing a generation’s potential not because they lack talent or discipline, but because they are mentally and emotionally exhausted. Until we address mental health, economic stress, and structural instability together, no amount of motivational talk will fix what is fundamentally a system pushing people beyond their psychological limits.