S52.04 - Mental health programmes in Africa: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

The countries of Africa are significantly different from one another. A first possible division is by their use of English, French, Spanish or Portuguese as their predominant second language.. The imposition of one of the European languages as the lingua franca for the countries that “belonged” to the same colonial power was always accompanied by the imposition of other contents of the colonizers’ culture, the traces of which can still be seen in many ways today. In addition to these group differences there are many other, individual differences, stemming from the local culture, previous history of the country and other sources. The differences are not only present among countries: within them there are subgroups of the population that differ sharply, in many ways from other citizens living within the same frontiers.

The heterogeneity of the continent makes it difficult to propose the development of mental health programmes for Africa. The rapidly developing large countries will have to build programmes that are different from those that should be developed in the small and often extremely poor countries. Features such as the level and speed of urbanization, the geography, economy and the predominant religion are probably more powerful determinants of programmes in Africa than the fact that the country is on the African continent. International collaboration is therefore particularly important for mental health programmes of the African countries.