Healing With Compassion is a community-based initiative that aims to prevent and address postpartum depression (PPD) among women in Dakar, Senegal, where 25.41% of mothers experience PPD yet none currently receive mental health screening during prenatal or postnatal care. The initiative takes a preventive, life-course approach by engaging not only pregnant and postpartum women, but also young mothers, women planning for pregnancy, and community members interested in broader sexual and reproductive health topics.

At the heart of the program will be Wellness Mother Circles: weekly, neighborhood-based support groups co-facilitated by trained community health workers, peer mothers with lived experience, and maternal health specialists. Sessions aim to combine psychoeducation, partner and family engagement, and culturally-grounded activities to address the stigma, isolation, and social pressures that compound maternal mental health struggles in Senegal.

The initiative hopes to build a lasting momentum of women supporting women, a growing circle of solidarity where mothers who have found strength through these conversations go on to hold that same space for others. Grounded in the Senegalese social medicine principle “nitt nitt moy garabam” (“people are each other’s medicine”), it is this solidarity that the initiative hopes will carry the work forward for years to come.