On July 23, the advocacy organization ONE will be sending ten mom bloggers to Kenya to learn what life is like for mothers in Africa. The ONE Moms campaign was created, in part, to show moms here in the US that we can use our voices to speak up for our counterparts across the globe, including those in the developing world. We can use our own platforms to support healthy motherhood everywhere, because in so many ways all moms are similar, even if the challenges we face and lifestyles we live are different.
Postpartum Progress is proud to be a ONE Week Community partner supporting this event. I had the fortune of speaking with Erin Hohlfelder, ONE’s Global Health Policy Manager, about mental health in the developing world. If you think we hardly have any help for postpartum depression and related illnesses here (which is true!), there’s almost none in places like Africa. Did you know, for instance, that in subsaharan Africa there is only one psychiatrist for every two million people? While Erin’s day-to-day global policy efforts center on HIV/AIDS and infectious diseases, she was happy to discuss the severe burden mental illness has on the developing world.
The World Health Organization reports that mental illness is the fourth leading cause of disability worldwide, and the tenth leading cause of death. In fact, Erin said, death by suicide is three times more likely (877,000 per year) than death due to maternal mortality like postpartum hemorrhage (360,000 per year). She added that while the burden of mental illness globally is “fairly astounding” there is a “severe lack” of funding and advocacy. Forty percent of all countries have no mental health policies, and one in four countries has no mental health legislation whatsoever to protect the civil rights of the mentally ill. In some places, it’s not uncommon for the mentally ill to be chained up and abused.
One particular point Erin made was, I thought, very interesting, and probably something of which major health funders are not aware given how little funding there is supporting mental health both here and across the globe. She said that untreated mental illness actually increases the risk for other health problems and diseases, including infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS, because those who are suffering from mental illness are less likely to seek help and less likely to care for themselves well and properly follow health and safety guidelines. As described by the WHO, “Mental illnesses affect and are affected by chronic conditions such as cancer, heart and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. Untreated, they bring about unhealthy behaviour, non-compliance with prescribed medical regimens, diminished immune functioning, and poor prognosis.” So why is it, then, that most low- and middle-income countries set aside less than 1% of their total health budgets for mental health? Do they recognize that by protecting women’s mental health we may be able to reduce the incidence of disease among both they and their children?
We know that the downstream benefit of treating mothers with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders like postpartum depression is twofold: it allows the mother to function better and it helps improve the long-term mental health of the baby. I think we have the power, while trying to improve the support and services available to women in our own countries, to speak out also for mothers around the world who deserve good mental health care as well. Perinatal mood and anxiety disorders should never be ignored. Postpartum Progress Inc., our nonprofit, hopes to develop the kind of support tools and materials for postpartum depression that are scaleable and can be tailored for each country and culture.
I hope you will join me and follow the ten ONE moms on their trip to Kenya. ONE would love for you to become a Community Partner as well, so that we can all raise our voices to help end poverty and poor health care among mothers and their babies in developing countries! You can join by signing up below.
