More good days, together: Uganda urged to prioritise mental health

_____________

OPINION

By Charlotte Oloya

This May, the global Mental Health Awareness Month theme invites a question that sounds simple and turns out to be quietly profound: What does a good day look like — for you, and for your community?

For a mother in Kampala, a good day might mean waking up with enough energy to cook breakfast, walk her children to school and arrive at work without the weight of invisible dread. For a woman in a refugee settlement in Adjumani district, a good day might mean laughing, genuinely laughing, for the first time in months. 

For a young man who has spent years cycling in and out of hopelessness, a good day might simply mean believing there will be another one. For a student preparing for university, it might mean being able to concentrate. For an employee, it might mean showing up fully. For an employer, it might mean a workforce present, not just in body, but in mind.

These are not abstract aspirations. They are the measure of what mental health care makes possible. As a country, more good days together means investing now in the mental wellbeing of our population, so that investment pays dividends through a more productive workforce, stronger families and a more resilient society. In Uganda right now, far too many people are not having enough of them.

Economic, human toll

Earlier this year, the National Planning Authority made public what those of us working in mental health have long known: Uganda is facing a mental health crisis. The State of Uganda Population Report 2025, launched under the theme, ‘Mental Health: A Silent Emergency’, found that approximately 24.2% of adults and 22.9% of children are affected by mental health conditions. Yet fewer than one in 10 people who need care receive appropriate support.

The numbers are staggering. Facility-reported mental health cases rose by 71% between 2021 and 2024. The monetary value of disability-adjusted life years lost to mental disorders climbed from sh283b in 2000 to sh2.96 trillion in 2023. Under a business-as-usual scenario, total economic losses are projected to balloon from $1.1b in 2024 to $4.5b by 2040.

As the Minister of Health, Jane Ruth Aceng, said at the report’s launch: “Mental health is not just a clinical issue; it is a developmental issue affecting human capital, service delivery and socio-economic resilience.” 

Uganda aims to grow its economy tenfold by 2040. That ambition will not be realised on the backs of a population carrying unaddressed psychological suffering.

The solution: Community-led care

The answer does not lie in building isolated, specialised clinics that most Ugandans cannot reach or afford. The most scalable and effective care is care embedded in the community, delivered through decentralised services in local health centres, schools and trusted community spaces. It can be done through group-based, lay-delivered talk therapies that operate within the language and daily rhythms of the people it serves.

Ripple effect

Mental health is not experienced in isolation. It is felt in relationships. A person treated for depression does not just get better for themselves; their children notice, the neighbours notice, as well as the community. They show up differently at the borehole, at the market, at the school gate and at the workplace. They become, once more, a full participant in the life of their community.

When a mother recovers, her household recoups. When a neighbour heals, the community around them shifts. Good days, when they come, ripple outward, through families, through local economies, through schools, through generations. This is not sentiment. It is the mechanism by which community mental health care multiplies its own returns.

Call to action

The “together” in this year’s theme is not decorative. It reaches far beyond the health sector. Mental health is an education issue, a workplace issue, a finance issue; it is multi-sectoral. It is a demand on schools, churches, mosques, employers, community leaders, not just governments. For Uganda to achieve its ambition of growing its economy tenfold by 2040, three things must happen now:

1. Fund the integration: Fully finance the Government’s commitment to integrate mental health into primary healthcare. A commitment without a budget is a wish.

2. Pass the guidelines: Swiftly complete and implement the operational guidelines for the Mental Health Act 2018. Uganda’s Mental Health Act was a landmark — but good laws, by themselves, do not produce good days.

3. Claim cross-sector ownership: Mental health is not the Ministry of Health’s problem alone. It requires active policy and cultural shifts from employers, educators, religious leaders and financial planners. Every sector that touches a Ugandan life has a role to play.

What would a good day look like for the woman in your neighbourhood who has been struggling in silence? For the young employee whose performance has been slipping for reasons no one has asked about? For the student who is physically present in the classroom but absent in every other sense?

Mental Health Awareness Month will end on Sunday (May 31). The crisis it asks us to confront will not. Uganda has named its emergency. Now it must act on it with the seriousness, the resources and the collective will that more good days, for all of us, require.

The writer is the deputy country director of StrongMinds Uganda, a non-profit providing community-based group therapy for depression across Sub-Saharan Africa