Kilifi, Kenya – KILIFI, Kenya (AP) — The daily grind of putting food on the table is causing stress for people around the world, especially women, who still do the bulk of the work. A climate change adds to the anxiety.
Kaloleni in Kilifi County is one of the Kenya poorest areas. Women carry buckets of water for miles across the dusty landscape. The houses are mostly made of clay and have no indoor plumbing. Corn plants wilt in the heat.
“These communities are struggling to grow crops and have to spend money on food,” said Zul Merali of the Aga Khan University, who founded a local institute for mental and brain health. “It puts a lot of pressure, especially on women, because they are responsible for making sure children and families are fed.”
This farming community is one of the best studied in Kenya. A network of local health workers visits each household every month to check on 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 cares for 115 families in Kilifi County, home to 532 people. He's been doing this work for 18 years and says he's seen a lot of change.
“People here are still farming, but their incomes are not what they 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 Aga Khan University's Brain and Mind Institute who wanted to study the impact of climate change on the mental health of women in rural farming communities in Kenya. Although climate anxiety has been studied in the US and Europe, no research has been conducted on women's mental health in this region. There was no baseline.
The university has already supported the Government of Kenya in collecting data in Kilifi County. For her own research into mental health and climate change, she only needed to add a few questions.
“Quantitative questions: Do you have suicidal thoughts, and if so, do you have them every day, several days a week, several times a month?” – said Shah. “Then we asked them about 15 questions related to climate shocks and looked at the correlation between climate shocks and people saying they were having suicidal thoughts.”
Shah said the survey of nearly 15,000 women revealed some warning signs. For example, he said, it appears that droughts and heat waves are associated with much higher rates of suicidal ideation.
Elizabeth Amina Kadenge is a 41-year-old farmer and mother of four from Kaloleni. At the time of the study, the corn crop was destroyed by drought. This year it was wiped out again due to too much rain.
“It was a very stressful moment because farming is also my business,” Kadenge said. “When I farm the way I know how, some of my corn goes into food and some goes into my business. But if that fails, I have no food and no business.”
Kadenge addressed her concerns about unstable weather by switching to planting cassava, which is less fickle. But corn takes three months from planting to harvest. Cassava takes a year. If a family is hungry, they must uproot it before it gets big enough to be sold and used for food, “because we have no other choice.”
With such challenges in rural Kenya, mental health is often not a priority. “We don’t talk about it much, not just in this community but everywhere,” Shah said.
Mercy Guitara is the Mental Health and Psychosocial Services Manager at the Kenya Red Cross. In her experience, the mental effects of droughts and floods are very real.
“There is a lot of psychological suffering in these communities, and some have developed mental health conditions such as depression,” she said.
She wants to see more attention paid to mental health. “Ensure that communities facing climate change can access mental health services,” she said.
Shah hopes that this is already starting to happen. He noted the government's program to promote public health across Kenya and mental health training for participants. “So if they see a problem with a particular household or person, they can refer them to a facility where they can be seen by a medical professional.”
Merali said such support is needed in the long term: “Climate change will not be a short-term phenomenon. It will remain forever.”
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