Mental health innovations to prevent violence in Thai society

The problem of violence in Thai society is escalating over time. According to the Global Peace Index 2022, which ranks countries based on their peace levels, Thailand is ranked 47th out of 163 countries in terms of violence. One of the increasing forms of violence is violence committed by children and youths. The Department of Juvenile Observation and Protection reported a 14.76% increase in the number of children and youths prosecuted for offenses related to life and bodily harm between 2021 and 2022. This clearly reflects that children and youths are resorting to violence more and more. One long-term research study on youth and violence in Thai society found that the quality of life for children and youths (as assessed by the children themselves) aged 12 to 18 has been declining since before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

Moreover, with the ongoing pandemic leading to a poor economy, most parents do not have time to care for their children, resulting in low quality of life for children and youths. There is evidence that children with a low quality of life are 3 to 10 times more likely to engage in violence compared to their peers, regardless of whether their parents are of lower or higher income. Therefore, a solution to this problem is to maintain both the internal and external resources of the children themselves, which consist of five powers: personal power, family power, the power of knowledge creation, peer and activity power, and community power. The assumption that if a child excels academically, they will have good resilience is a misunderstanding, as research on analytical thinking skills and public-mindedness aimed at developing the potential to be good and capable students in Thailand has found that the highest-performing students tend to have the least public-mindedness.