By Joyce Mukucha
More than half of people with mental illness do not seek help for their disorders, they even avoid or delay seeking treatment due to concerns about being treated differently or fears of losing their jobs and livelihood.
Worldwide, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination against people with mental illness still remain a problem that can lead to harm such as suicide.
Realising that mental health is a fundamental component of health that is being given less recognition and awareness about its importance, Aruka Foundation a mental health organisation is making concerted efforts to create a world in which mental health is valued and promoted especially amongst the marginalised and vulnerable groups, particularly the rural areas.
The organisation is driven by a mandate to educate, empower and equip people on suicide, depression, and other social ills that may lead to mental health problems.
In an interview with Spiked Online Media, Aruka Foundation founder, Amanda Nyagato said in 2021 her organisation was committed to increasing understanding and overcoming stigma to ensure that many people get exposed to mental health through strategic communications and social mobilization.
She said steps towards strengthening mental health programmes were crucial and 2021 should be a year of bringing change.
“People with mental illness are marginalized and discriminated in various ways, but understanding what that looks like and how to address and eradicate it can help.
“Our main in 2021 is that we want to be present everywhere particularly the rural areas and make sure that people are alert and aware about the mental health issues,suicide awareness, depression and all sorts. We are trying by all means to be present online, on radio and even on television. We are working on having as many adverts as possible on mental health.
“Our main target areas actually are the rural communities and the marginalised because most of the time people just believe that depression and mental illness is for the wealthy. It’s a myth that we want to break and make everyone understand that mental illness affects everyone from all walks of life,” said Nyagato.
She said the organisation was in the process of visiting the rural villages so as to interact and engage with the marginalised groups.
However, the new normal posed by Covid-19 lockdown has disrupted some of the plans, and Aruka working on strategising how best those groups can be reachable.
“The major challenge is that of impacting the marginalised and those in rural areas. For instance, trying to have a counseling session with someone who is miles away without access to a cellphone and internet.
“We are trying to come up with strategies on how we can empower them. We hope to partner with telecommunication companies and make resources accessible to people in those areas.”
She added that other challenges were attributed to online therapy, as she explained that it is so easy for one not to commit to a session.
To address this, Nyagato said the organisation was working tirelessly to try and engage and build support structures around people that would be targeted for online sessions.
“As Aruka, we are trying our best to stretch our capacity so that we manage to reach out to many people. We are living in very difficult times but we are always centered on our purpose, the purpose that helps our energy and encouragement being revitalised and keeps our minds unchanged when it comes to assisting people with mental problems.”
ARUKA is also working with other organisations such as the Women Association of Survivors and Red Lipstick Revolution having online conferences in their collaborations.
In 2020, the organisation made huge strides in as much as impacting people’s lives is concerned for it even managed to connect with diasporans despite the Covid-19 effects as it aimed to bridge the gap in making people there understand their mental health position.
“The year 2020 was different for us in terms of impacting people and doing our work because of the pandemic. We are mostly a self-funded organisation and our co-founders were hit hard, which made it difficult for the projects. It was a rocky path but we always had new strategies to make it work.
“It was really difficult for me because I had to find myself a strong financial footing so that I can be able to support the organisation. We had to refocus and figure out how best we can help people. Almost everyone was affected emotionally, psychologically, physically but there is always a way out.
“As of 2020, in terms of impacting on other people’s lives, the greatest thing we did was through online conferences.
“We managed to connect with the Zim Diaspora community and that helped us to understand their world and when we can come in because life in the diaspora is really hard , you are caught in the middle and sense of belonging is very important to every human. We got that enlightenment of how it is significant to have a sense of belonging when living in the diaspora especially to those who give birth and raise families there.
“I think that is the whole new idea we managed to tap into in as much as we wanted to be able to give our donations. Our financials were hit hard but I’m glad that we still managed to impact to a certain community in the world. These ties and relationships we developed in those conferences are actually helping us in our 2021 strategies,” she said.
From 2020 negatives, Nyagato said, Aruka managed to take positives and lessons to focus on in 2021 and developed a firm structure as an organisation and managed to come up with various strategies.
ARUKA is also spearheading socio-economic empowerment through a scheme called Pekutangira which seek to help people who cannot financially sustain themselves.
“As of 2021, we are working on implimenting scheme called Pekutangira because we have realised the root cause of the position that people find themselves in. We realised that almost all of the people we have engaged have one thing in common that is financial crisis. So we figured out that its not only talking to people that can help but also providing a platform where we empower them with income generating skills and also give basic donations for them to be able to sustain themselves and their families in these difficult times.
“The Pekutangira scheme is aimed at benefitting everyone who visit our premises, we believe that they should leave with something to financially empower themselves.”
As an organisation, ARUKA Foundation offers individual, family and group therapies and it is striving to do more of family therapy because most issues are rooted in the family.
Nyagato explained that the organisation also have support groups though they have shortcomings during this pandemic following that people were not willing to open up online and prefer to talk in person.
Aruka Foundation is not only a Zimbabwean organisation, it is looking forward on impacting the whole continent and go global as well. For now it is registered as a trust in Zimbabwe and UK.
“We aim to stretch to other countries because the global statistics that we hear of a person commiting suicide after every 40 seconds are disturbing so we want to infiltrate as many spaces as we can and save many lives.
“We intend to develop all other wings that we realised when dealing with individuals that they lead to mental illness. We have the clubs for youth, a place where issues of sexual health and reproductive rights are discussed, empower them via social media and educate them about mental health from all angles.
The organisation is also working on one of its major goals, which is including the media department where it will delve into documentaries, films, short stories and have the organisation’s own channel where people can be educated about mental illness.
Along the way, Aruka is aiming to work in line with the Sustainable Development Goals to ensure that people are trained and empowered.
Nyagato stressed that mental health promotion should be mainstreamed into governmental policies and programmes with more grants being disbursed to cater for the affected groups.
She said it it was essential for government to involve the education, labour, justice, transport, environment, housing, and welfare sectors for people who suffer from mental illness.
“My plea to the government of Zimbabwe is to provide or make grants more accessible as well as extend support to projects for people with mental illness.”
In other countries, organisations are also making concerted efforts to develop comprehensive suicide prevention strategies.
Advocating for mental health awareness worldwide, the World Health Organisation Western Pacific Regional Office has supported Member States in promoting and advocating mental health, which includes raising awareness on dementia.
In 2017, it spearheaded the “Let’s talk” campaign on depression, promoting workplace mental health, reducing availability of and access to alcohol, as well as developing comprehensive suicide prevention strategies.
