Depression is the most prevalent mental illness in the world. Nowhere is this more evident than in Africa, where approximately 100 million people suffer from the disease [1], costing the economy roughly U.S. $5 billion a year.
For African women – who are afflicted at twice the rate of men – depression is the number one cause of disability. Compared with her healthy peers, a woman with depression is more likely to miss work, experience physical pain, and struggle to care for her children. They are also less likely to take full advantage of healthcare or livelihood programs offered by NGOs, rendering those initiatives less effective. Yet, due to the lack of investment in mental health services, 85 percent of people who experience depression in Africa – including 66 million women – have no access to effective treatment. [2]
Since 2014, StrongMinds has been providing free, lay counselor-led, community-based group talk therapy for depression to women in Uganda and Zambia.
At the time of initial partnering with Spring Impact in 2018, StrongMinds had already reached over 50,000 depressed women in just four years. Nevertheless, StrongMinds was asking itself:
“How can we deliver depression treatment on a much larger scale, enlisting others across the social, private, and public sectors to reach millions of women and enable them to lead more healthy, productive and satisfying lives? Can we improve outcomes for other NGOs’ development initiatives by layering in StrongMinds’ mental health services?”