Murang'a: A Murang'a based mental health advocate Rhoda Mwongela has bagged a prestigious award for her efforts in advocating for mental health awareness in the country.
According to Kenya News Agency, the 24-year-old Mwongela, who has actively been involved in intensive campaigns on mental wellness for the past five years, emerged the top woman in mental health at the Top Ten Women in Mental Health 2026 awards organized by the Nivishe Foundation. She was among ten nominees, listed for the recognition for their involvement in mental health advocacy.
Mwongela, who is popularly known as the bossbaby of mental health, says the award added assurance and drive to her mission, which is to help the young people seek mental health service and also fight the stigma associated with mental illness. 'I was nominated for this award due to my consistency in advocacy in mental health with my major focus being the young people,' she remarked. 'I have purposely dedicated myself to initiating conversations and creating spaces that directly address the mental health challenges affecting young people,' Mwongela added.
Since 2021, the mental health advocate has been doing her campaign through face-to-face interactions and virtual interactions on the digital space through her platform dubbed 'Let's Talk with Bossbaby'. 'One thing I understood is that to get the young people, you have to meet them where they are and given that they spend most of their time online, I decided to utilize the space,' she said. 'We hold virtual sessions every Wednesday to educate people on mental wellness and give them a chance to speak out,' she explained.
Mwongela also visits learning institutions to have a dialogue with the learners and interact with them; creating awareness and offering free counselling. Over the years, she has partnered with a team of healthcare providers including psychiatrists, therapists, mental health nurses, trained mental health advocates and enthusiasts, professional counselors and peer counselors who work together to help people seeking mental health services depending on the severity of their specific situations.
Mwongela says she has reached out to more than 20,000 young people via her online platforms, and seeing their lives transform is her greatest motivation. Her efforts are geared towards amplifying issues of mental illness, even to the global level to help demystify the notion held by many people that the situation is normally caused by a curse or witchcraft, while at the same time creating a safe place for people to speak out. 'People don't understand that mental illness is a disease like any other; some believe it's because of witchcraft or that someone is cursed,' she added.
Mwongela notes that identity crisis, childhood trauma, and adverse childhood experiences are some of the contributing factors to mental instability among children and adolescents. Economic hardships, relationship crisis, depression, anxiety disorders, and trauma are other major causes of mental instability in adults.
Mwongela is now calling upon the government to consider lowering the cost for mental health services, saying the high charges make it unaffordable to many people. 'Mental wellness could also be included in the primary health care routine, as this will help in identifying any problem at an early stage,' she noted. 'The government also needs to intensify awareness of mental wellness because there is very little information about it,' she added.
Meanwhile, a report of the Taskforce on Mental Health of 2020 pointed out that mental illnesses such as depression and suicide, bipolar disorder, substance use disorder, schizophrenia, and other psychoses account for 13 percent of the entire disease burden in Kenya. The Ministry of Health's Mental Health Investment Case 2021 puts the burden of mental health conditions at Sh62.2 billion annually (0.6 of the GDP), due to loss of productivity capacities.