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The daily process of putting food on the table is stressful for people around the world, especially women, who still take on the lion’s share of that work. Changing weather further increases the concern.
Kaloleni in Kilifi County is one of the poorest areas in Kenya. Women carry buckets of water for miles across the dusty landscape. houses Most are made of clay and have no indoor plumbing. Maize plants dry up in summer.
“These communities are struggling to grow their crops and have to spend money on food,” said Zul Merali of Aga Khan University, who has set up a local institute for mental and brain health. “This creates a lot of pressure, especially on women, because they are in charge of making sure that children and families are fed.”
This farming community is one of the most studied populations of Kenya. A network of community health workers visits all the households every month to check how people are doing. They fill out questionnaires that the government uses to understand the needs of rural communities.
Humphrey Kitsao is a community health promoter who looks after 115 households with a total of 532 people in Kilifi County. He has done this work for 18 years and says he has seen a lot of change.
,People There is still farming here, but their income is not what it used to be,” he told The Associated Press. “They have to spend a lot of money on their farms, but often there is no harvest.”
Jasmeet Shah is a data scientist at the Brain and Mind Institute at Aga Khan University who wanted to research the impact of climate change on the mental health of women in rural farming communities in Kenya. While climate concerns have been studied United States of America And EuropeThere were no studies conducted on mental health with women in this area. There was no baseline.
The university was already supporting the Government of Kenya in data collection in Kilifi County. For its own research on mental health and climate change, it just had to add a few questions.
“The questions are quantitative: Are you having suicidal thoughts, and if so, do they occur every day, several days a week, a few times a month?” Shah said. “Then we asked them a set of about 15 questions related to climate shocks, and looked at the relationship between climate shocks and people saying they were having suicidal thoughts.”
Shah said the survey of nearly 15,000 women revealed some worrying signs. For example, he said, it appears that drought and heat waves are linked to higher levels of suicidal thoughts.
Elizabeth Amina Kadenj is a 41-year-old farmer and mother of four in Kaloleni. At the time of the study, his maize crop was destroyed by drought. This year, it was destroyed again – due to too much rain.
“It’s been very stressful because farming is also my business,” Kadenz said. “When I farm to the best of my knowledge, some of my corn is for eating, and some for my business. But if it fails, I have neither food nor business.”
To address their concerns about the unreliable weather, Kadenj has begun planting cassava, which is less volatile. But maize takes three months from sowing to harvesting. Cassava takes one year. If the family is hungry, they have to uproot it before it becomes big enough to sell and use for food “because we have no other choice.”
Because of such problems in rural Kenya, mental health is often not a priority. “We don’t talk about it much, not just in that community, but everywhere,” Shah said.
Mercy Githara is a mental health and psychosocial manager at the Kenya Red Cross. In his experience, the mental toll caused by drought or floods is very real.
“There is a lot of psychological distress in these communities and some of them have developed mental health conditions such as depression,” he said.
She wants to put more emphasis on mental health. “Ensure that communities facing climate change are able to access mental health services,” she said.
Shah hopes that this has already started to happen. He mentioned the government’s Community Health Promotion Program and mental health training for participants across Kenya. “So if they see a problem in a certain household or individual, they can refer them to a facility where they can be seen by a health professional.”
Merali said such support is needed in the long term: “Climate change is not a short-term thing. It’s here to stay.”
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