Mind Over Matter: Inside the Movement to Transform Mental Health in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone’s mental health workforce has nearly tripled in the past three years thanks to a wave of government investments and collaborations with Partners in Health, a global NGO. However, there is still only one psychiatrist for every 1 million citizens in the country. Standing in the shadow of a bloody civil war, two global pandemics, and a looming drug epidemic, mental health workers and advocates have had to contend with a treatment gap of nearly 98 percent.

Against these odds, there have been tremendous efforts to improve mental health care services countrywide. The new and improved Sierra Leone Psychiatric Hospital—the country’s only inpatient psychiatric facility—has been the recipient of multiple modernization efforts, beginning with the elimination of chain restraints in 2018, the addition of a child and adolescent unit in 2021, and, one year ago, the accreditation of the country’s first psychiatry residency training program. Seven young physicians make up the first class of psychiatry residents ever trained in Sierra Leone, and they join a special cadre of mental health workers and advocates on the long journey towards healing bodies and minds. They represent an important milestone in the country’s efforts to transform mental health care, but they stand on the precarious edge of the arc of history and face a tall order ahead.

In this project, Blessed Sheriff dissects the pitfalls and triumphs of a fledgling mental health system and discovers what it will take to generate lasting progress.