Mental health advocate urges Zimbabwe to fund youth crisis services

A young Zimbabwean psychology graduate is demanding urgent government investment in mental health services, warning that the country’s youth are suffering in silence while resources remain desperately thin on the ground.

Tanatswa Amanda Chikaura, 24, didn’t set out to become an advocate. But when a fellow student at the University of Zimbabwe died by suicide during her second year of study, something shifted. She couldn’t look away. That loss, she says, made the statistics feel unbearably real.

A system stretched to breaking point

Zimbabwe has fewer than 15 psychiatrists serving a population of roughly 16 million people, according to World Health Organization figures. Most are concentrated in Harare. For young people in rural provinces, accessing any form of mental health support can mean traveling hundreds of kilometers — or simply going without.

Chikaura has spent the past two years running peer support workshops at secondary schools and university campuses across Mashonaland, reaching over 800 students. Still, she’s clear-eyed about the limits of peer support alone. “We can hold space for each other, but we can’t prescribe medication or provide therapy,” she said. “That requires trained professionals, and right now we just don’t have enough of them.”

Youth bearing the heaviest burden

The numbers are sobering. A 2022 survey by the Zimbabwe National Association for Mental Health found that nearly 1 in 3 young Zimbabweans aged 15 to 25 reported experiencing symptoms consistent with depression or anxiety. Yet fewer than 8 percent had ever spoken to a mental health professional.

Stigma is part of it. So is cost. A single private therapy session in Harare can run between $30 and $60 — an impossible sum for most young people in a country where youth unemployment sits above 40 percent.

Chikaura wants the government to allocate at least 5 percent of the national health budget to mental health by 2027, up from the current figure of less than 1 percent. She’s also calling for trained counselors to be placed in every secondary school.

Calling on those in power

A spokesperson for Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Health acknowledged the gaps. “We recognize that mental health has historically been underfunded, and we are working to integrate mental health care into our primary health care framework,” the spokesperson said, without providing a specific timeline or budget commitment.

Chikaura isn’t waiting for vague assurances.

She’s currently partnering with two regional NGOs to launch a free mental health hotline specifically for Zimbabwean youth, expected to go live in early 2025. The line will be staffed by trained counselors and will operate in both English and Shona.

A generation refusing to stay quiet

What makes Chikaura’s campaign notable isn’t just its urgency — it’s the growing chorus behind it. Young advocates across Sub-Saharan Africa are pushing mental health onto national agendas with a persistence previous generations rarely managed. And in Zimbabwe, for the first time in a long while, people are starting to listen.