Many young people in Vietnam grow up amid strict parenting, family conflict, and violence at home. Without open communication and emotional connection in the family, adolescents are more vulnerable to mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, substance use, and suicidal thoughts. Few initiatives in Vietnam address family conflict and parent-child relationships directly.
We are developing an entertainment education intervention that uses narrative stories on film to strengthen communication and relationships between adolescents and the adults who care for them, and to open conversations about mental health. Young people are involved throughout its development, helping to shape the characters and storylines, creating the film materials and social media content, and informing how the intervention is delivered in their own schools and communities.
The approach brings two strands of work together in our lab. It draws on the family systems orientation and the communication, coping, and problem-solving strategies used in Tuko Pamoja and Coping Together, and on the entertainment education format tested in Parenting on the Border, where a narrative film reduced violence against children and improved parenting among migrant and displaced families on the Thailand-Myanmar border.