As the world is grappling with the rise of mental health issues, a group of ten female artists aims at continuing the much needed conversations around mental health through art.. This exhibition is scheduled for January 7 at L’espace, Kacyiru.

Dubbed ‘Walk with Me’ the exhibition is curated by Jemima Kakizi, a certified lay counselor and visual artist. She revealed that art can also be used to start conversations around mental health inviting everyone to reflect and confront internalised negative attitudes around mental health. It can also highlight the impact of stigma in the hopes that society changes their attitude towards mental health.

The ten artists who usually use different mediums like art installation, digital art, photography and paintings include Odile Uwera, Chel Teta, Ingride Mukundente, Fabiola U. Rutamu, Natacha Muziramakenga, Ines Ineza, Poupoutte, Christel Arras, Myriam Birara and Alice Kayibanda.

"Mental health is a topic that we need to talk about mostly as Rwandans who experienced the horrific events of the Genocide against the Tutsi that happened in our country, and of course recently the covid 19 that the whole world experienced. We should educate ourselves on mental health so that we can know how to heal and be supportive to one another. We cannot heal from something that we don’t even understand so we should first educate ourselves to take steps to finding solutions because healing is a journey,” explained Kakizi.

She added that it is more of walking together as a society on a journey of understanding mental health issues and how we can be supportive and be there for each other.

This year’s global theme on mental health was "making mental health and well-being for all a global priority,” and it aimed at creating an opportunity for people with mental health conditions, activists, governments, employers, employees and more stakeholders to come together to recognise progress in the field and talk about what is needed to ensure that mental health and well-being becomes a global priority for all.

Recently, Ndera Neuro-Psychiatric Teaching Hospital said that since the beginning of this year, it has received 7,817 patients battling depression compared to 1,743 recorded last year. Majority of the new cases are middle aged people between the ages of 20 to 39 years of age.