By Fredrick Odhiambo
Program Officer- Health, Water & Sanitation

As we come to the end of  May, a critical month when we observe Mental Health Awareness, we must continue to amplify conversations around mental well-being, reduce stigma, and demand better systems that prioritize mental health for all. The 2025 theme, “Turn Awareness into Action,” calls on each one of us to do more than talk; it urges us to advocate, protect, and implement structural change. While important strides have been made in Kenya including the Mental Health (Amendment) Act, 2022, which emphasizes the right to accessible, affordable, and quality mental health services, implementation and equity remain major challenges. The National Mental Health Action Plan (2021–2025) also provides a critical framework, yet without a human rights-based approach, these policies risk excluding those most affected.

We must remember: mental health is a human right.
Violations of economic and social rights including unlawful evictions, land grabbing, climate change-driven displacement, privatization of healthcare, environmental injustices, poor social protection and the soaring cost of living have compounded psychological distress among marginalized communities in the Arid and Semi-Arid counties and informal settlements, eroding community mental well-being.

Now is the time to translate those commitments into meaningful change.
Mental health cannot be addressed in isolation; it is deeply intertwined with the broader realization of economic and social rights. When families are evicted unlawfully, when children are forced to learn on empty stomachs, their ability to concentrate and absorb information is severely impacted, when women walk kilometers for water, and when healthcare becomes a luxury that only the wealthy can afford, these are not just development challenges. They are systemic injustices that silently harm people’s mental well-being.

We must recognize that violations of the right to health, housing, education, water, sanitation, and food are significant contributors to psychological distress, anxiety, depression, and trauma particularly in marginalized communities, including ASAL counties and urban informal settlements, where intersecting vulnerabilities are most acute.

To move from policy to impact, we must:

🔹 Prioritize public and community-led mental health care. Let’s invest in decentralized, culturally responsive, and gender-sensitive mental health services rooted in communities, not just clinical models in urban centers.

🔹 Address structural and root causes. Mental health interventions must respond to the drivers of distress such as entrenched poverty, food insecurity, forced displacement, climate-related disasters, gender based violence, and land and housing rights violations. Without addressing these, we risk treating symptoms, not causes.

🔹 Resource and enforce rights-based mental health laws and policies. The Mental Health (Amendment) Act 2022 and the National Mental Health Action Plan (2021–2025) must be fully funded, locally contextualized, and implemented through a human rights lens with accountability to the people most affected.

🔹Integrate mental health in all sectors. Mental health should be a cross-cutting priority in education, social protection, urban planning, WASH, food systems, and climate action. It is not a stand-alone issue, it is a development, human rights, and justice issue.

Mental health is not just a personal issue, it is a political, social, and environmental justice issue. Let’s keep advocating!