StrongMinds
For over ten years, StrongMinds has worked to close the mental health treatment gap in Africa. They deploy ground-breaking innovations to bring free, evidence-based, culturally relevant mental health care to the world’s most under-resourced populations. They are committed to turning the tide against mental health disparities, ensuring that every individual on the planet has the support
they need to lead healthy, productive, satisfying lives.
StrongMinds is a global nonprofit organisation driven by the fundamental belief that mental health is a human right, and the foundation of thriving families and communities.
Vision
To end the global
depression epidemic.
Mission
To democratize access
to mental healthcare for people
with depression globally.
Values
Focus on people, passion, data-driven decision making, open communication, collaboration.
How does StrongMinds work?
StrongMinds treats depression using Group Interpersonal Therapy (IPT-G), an evidence-based model that is highly scalable. They also provide psychoeducational and engage in advocacy to reduce stigma and unlock funding and resources to support mental health in underserved settings.
Their approach is composed of four pillars:
- treatment: they provide free, community-based therapy to people in low-resource settings, with a primary focus on Africa to-date
- research: they obsessively track their impact to refine and strengthen their model
- advocacy: they galvanize the global development community to advance supportive policies
- partnerships: they partner with governments and NGOs to integrate their model into existing programs and services.
StrongMinds by the numbers
$44.56
our estimate of the cost to provide a course of group therapy to 1 person
1.80 WELLBY
our estimated impact per course of therapy
$25
estimated cost to create 1 WELLBY
426,642
people treated in 2024
You can learn more about WELLBYs here.
Why do we recommend StrongMinds?
To assess StrongMinds we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of the academic literature of psychotherapy in low- and middle-income countries, and then combined this with the evidence from StrongMinds own programmes. StrongMinds is one of two organisations we conducted the deepest research on. We rate it as a top charity because it is highly cost-effective at improving global wellbeing and we are confident about our analysis. You can find the full (~200 page) report here. We concluded that StrongMinds is one of the most cost-effective and well-evidenced
life-improving charities we have evaluated in depth so far. You can find the full (~200 page) report here.
