Your voice matters
The most powerful thing The Mind Project can do is give voice to real experience. If you have lived with a mental health challenge, supported someone who has, or work in this field: we want to hear from you.
Open to all, lived experience is the most valuable credential
Multiple formats, essays, articles, podcasts, research
Clinical review on all health information content before publication
Safe, supported, our editorial team works with you, not just on you
Every story published on The Mind Project is a gift to the next person who needs to know they are not alone.
Across Africa, millions of people experience mental health challenges in silence. Not because they are alone. Because they have never seen their experience named in public, taken seriously, treated as something worth writing about. The stories that do reach our media sensationalise, stigmatise, or flatten complex lives into cautionary tales. We do the opposite.
When you share your story here, you are not just telling us what happened to you. You are handing a lifeline to someone who is still in the middle of it.
We are particularly interested in stories that have not been told before, the texture of daily life with depression, the specific shape of burnout in an African workplace, what it feels like to seek therapy for the first time, how communities grieve collectively, what recovery actually looks like when it is not linear.
You do not need to have recovered. You do not need a happy ending. You do not need to be a professional writer. You need only to have lived it, and to be willing to share it carefully.
First-person accounts of living with any mental health challenge, depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, burnout, OCD, psychosis, addiction, or anything else. No experience is too ordinary or too extreme.
Deeply reported stories on the mental health system, policy, community responses, clinical innovation, or the intersection of mental health with work, family, education, or culture in Africa.
Mental health professionals translating their clinical experience or research into accessible public narrative. We help you write for a general audience without losing rigour.
Stories from family members, partners, and caregivers navigating the experience of supporting someone with a mental health condition, including the toll it takes on them.
Interview proposals, personal audio essays, or documentary sound ideas for The Mind Project podcast. Tell us the story and why audio is the right medium for it.
Visual stories documenting mental health experiences, communities, or services across Africa. We accept photo essays and short documentary pitches with a clear mental health focus.
These are not gatekeeping requirements. They are the commitments that make The Mind Project safe for contributors and for readers. We enforce them because we care about both.
We follow the WHO media guidelines on mental health and suicide reporting. Content that could put readers at risk, including descriptions of methods, glorification of self-harm, or content that could trigger without adequate support, will not be published regardless of literary merit.
Any content that includes health information, clinical recommendations, or references to treatment is reviewed by a qualified psychologist before publication. We will work with you on this, it is not adversarial, it is editorial care.
You may publish under your full name, a first name, initials, or a pseudonym. We will never publish identifying information you have not explicitly approved. For stories involving other people, their consent or sufficient anonymisation is required.
Stories should not degrade the dignity of the person at the centre, including yourself. We will push back gently but firmly if a piece veers into self-flagellation, clinical sensationalism, or language that stigmatises people with mental illness.
Writing about your own mental health experience can be emotionally demanding. Our editorial team is trained to hold space for this. We do not rush contributors, we offer emotional check-ins during the editing process, and we will pause or stop if that is what you need.
We publish work that has not appeared elsewhere in whole or in substantial part. We are happy to discuss translations or significant reworkings of previous pieces on a case-by-case basis.
Send us a brief outline of what you want to share, the format you have in mind, and a little about yourself, your lived experience, your profession, or simply what brought you to this. We respond within 1-2 business days. No pitch is too small or too uncertain.