World Mental Health Day 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted heavily on the mental health of the world’s population. Lockdowns, limited social interactions and most especially the unexpected deaths of family members and loved ones, resulted in high incidences of grief and depression. Also, the loss livelihood, the anxiety caused by consistent fear of contracting and possibly dying from the disease, also contributed to increased levels of mental and emotional stress for many.

Imagine having to experience all of these, while being immunocompromised, because of an underlying health condition like breast cancer. This places a much higher mental health burden as compared to the average person. Research has shown that some of the people struggling the most during this pandemic are those with underlying medical conditions and those suffering from one form of discrimination (health inequity) or the other.

This year’s World Mental Health theme titled, “Mental Health in an Unequal World”, clearly describes our reality as African immigrants. Even though we are all citizens of the world, yet we live in an unequal world. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our mental health as African immigrants living with breast cancer or as breast cancer survivors cannot be overemphasized.

This is why as an organization, we will continue to provide psychosocial and mental health support to our community. We are committed to reducing the burden of breast cancer and the COVID-19 pandemic on the African immigrant community.