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By Salami Adeyinka

A non-governmental organisation, Counseling Africa, has reached over 100 women through a postpartum depression (PPD) awareness campaign across 10 primary health centres (PHCs) in Ibadan, Oyo State.

The outreach, conducted between May and June, focused on delivering mental health education directly to pregnant women and frontline health workers in underserved communities within the city.

The initiative covered communities including Sango, Ojoo, Iwo Road, Oke Apon, Agbowo, Eleyele, Oke Itunu, Apete, Onireke, and Ogunpa.

In five of these locations, the team engaged women attending antenatal clinic sessions, providing practical information on postpartum depression; its symptoms, how to recognise it, and available support options.

To ensure continued awareness beyond the visits, educational infographics on PPD were displayed prominently within the health centres across all 10 communities.

Pamphlets on mental health and emotional wellbeing were distributed to mothers during clinic days, offering accessible resources they could take home and share with their families.

Health workers such as hospital staff, community health officers, public health workers, and mental health workers were on ground to assist the mothers.

This approach reflects the organisation’s understanding that community mental health is a shared responsibility across every level of care.

At the centre of the outreach was the formal launch of a resource booklet that Counseling Africa describes as a first of its kind in Nigeria: The Community Mental Health Framework: Reference Standard and Gap Analysis Tool for Stakeholders by Mr. Olusegun Iyejare.

Iyejare is a licensed developmental psychologist and counsellor and founder of Counseling Africa.

His framework aims to bring every category of community mental health stakeholder under one operational structure, with clearly defined roles for government agencies, NGOs, primary health centres and facility managers, traditional and community leaders, religious institutions, schools, families, researchers, the media, donors, and the private sector.

“There has been no working framework that pulls all of these stakeholders together and tells each one exactly what their role is.

“Community mental health cannot work when everyone is operating in isolation. This framework gives us a common language and a shared structure,” he emphasised.

The booklet, distributed to health workers and community stakeholders during the outreach, marks the first print of what the organisation intends to push into wider circulation, to policymakers, health institutions, civil society organisations, and development partners across Nigeria.

The outreach itself was driven by Iyejare’s concern about a widening gap between online mental health content and what ordinary Nigerians in communities actually know.

“Most of the mental health conversations happening today are online. People with internet access can at least look things up. But people in our communities are almost entirely cut off from this information, and our outreach confirmed this.

“Most of the mothers we met had never heard of postpartum depression before. We were their first contact with this information.”

That reality, he said, shaped Counseling Africa’s decision to prioritise pregnant and postpartum women as a starting point. “Pregnant

women are a vulnerable group. They need the most urgent attention. But this is only the beginning, we are looking forward to reaching other demographic groups in the coming months.”

As postpartum depression continues to be under diagnosed and underreported across Nigeria, Counseling Africa’s Ibadan outreach signals something larger than a sensitisation campaign.

It is the beginning of a structured, stakeholder-driven approach to community mental health that the organisation hopes will set a new standard for how Nigeria addresses mental wellness at the grassroots level.