Ugandan Women with Psychosocial Disabilities Have a Message for Those Who Are Struggling: ‘We Can Make It. … Stand for Your Rights.’

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At different points in their lives, Dorothy Natako Mubezi and Irene Isiko faced challenges as women with psychosocial disabilities. Isiko, for instance, had to stop working as a secondary school teacher, while Mubezi struggled with her early education. Both eventually connected with a Ugandan organization called Triumph Mental Health Support and Recovery Program, and new opportunities opened up to them. For Mubezi, these included founding her own organization, Uganda National Self-Advocacy Initiative, and receiving prestigious awards and fellowships from the likes of the World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry and the Zero Project. Isiko’s life took a different turn. She started her own dairy farm. “In my heart, doing what I had done professionally, I was coming to the end of that road,” says Isiko about her teaching career, “but it shouldn’t be the road to the end of my life. … I’m a happy woman now.”

Editing assistance by Ziyu Peng