Hi my name is Luvana Shrestha and I live in Nepal.

Can you imagine how it must feel like being a woman with mental illness living on the remotest mountain range in the world?

If you are born a girl in an isolated village on the Greater Himalayas, you are likely not to attend school either because there is none in your village, or simply because only boys are considered worthy of an education. By the age of 10 you are likely to be working alongside your parents, picking potatoes, fetching ice cold water from the nearest spring, or looking after the family's goats. When you have your first menstrual cycle, you will be banned from mixing with your family until it stops. By the age of 15, you might be married against your will. By the age of 18, you might be expecting your second child. Imagine if on top of all of this, you suffered from depression or any other mental illness, but you had had nobody to turn to for help.

It probably comes as no surprise that suicide is the leading of cause of death amongst women of working age across many Himalayan communities.

Since 2019, Jaya Mental Health has been running free mental health clinics in the eastern rural region of Ilam, Nepal. Our tenacious team of nurses, counsellors and doctors has offered more than 1,000 appointments to over 200 people, the majority of these being women and young girls; we trained over 92 local community workers in basic mental health care skills, ensuring 14,000 people have access to trained carers when in need of support; and we increased regional awareness on mental illness and women's rights. In these past two years and as Covid-19 raged across the world, we achieved far more than we ever expected. However, our biggest challenge is yet to come.

A challenge we cannot turn our backs to

As 2021 comes to an end, we have been asked by local community leaders to launch a similar free mental health clinical service in Upper Mustang, in the far northwest of Nepal, a remote region with an average altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level. Here, there is only one small general hospital managed by 3 doctors and 4 nurses serving a population of over 15,000 people; it takes days to reach these high-altitude communities; roads are precarious and often blocked by heavy snow and landslides. Its a monumental logistical and human challenge, but one that we cannot refuse. 

Will you help us bring mental health care to some of the worlds most forgotten communities and give young women like Bimala the care and support they so desperately deserve?

From all of us, thank you so much for your support and Merry Christmas.

Jaya Mental Health www.jayamentalhealth.org.uk