Why doctors are going mad, committing suicide

Ahead of the World Mental Health Day last week, over 300 healthcare providers converged at The Nairobi Hospital for the first Annual Moral Injury Symposium. The forum discussed various aspects of mental health, with a rich menu of presentations from Prof Lukoye Atwoli, Mary Sirima, Dr Mucheru Wang’ombe, and Michael Onyango among others.

In Kenya and the rest of Africa, mental illness is a subject often discussed in hushed tones due to the stigma attached to the condition. It gets worse if the victim is a healthcare provider. Yet, the reality on the ground is that there are more cases of undiagnosed mental illness among healthcare providers. Indeed, mental illness is a silent epidemic among the health practitioners even as one in every four Kenyans (About 11.5 million) live with the condition.