Mental Health: Well-Informed Widows Create a Healthy Community.

The framework of the human body is artistic, and with this artistry comes the body's physical structure, along with its organs, cells, tissues, and systems of operations.

From the brain to the heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, and intestines, the human body boasts of fluids such as the mixture of blood and water, which transport nutrients throughout the body. This mixture of blood and water together with the mixture of food and beverages we consume daily, including prescription medications and over the counter ones and also native herbal remidies, all become compound mixtures in the body, transporting themselves through the veins, arteries, nerves, and spine, to make the human body the moving object or life vessel which we know it to be.

And because the human body internally absorbs these mixtures as sponges do with water or with oil, or with other forms of liquid at contact, therefore, when these mixtures become too much or too little in the body, the body reacts to them as a result of their absorption levels in the body. This is why psychiatrists, neurologists, and clinical psychologists would say that one major cause of mental health issues is a chemical imbalance in the brain, because the pituitary gland, which resides in the brain, regulates the activities of the body's operations. But in the form of the brain being the central unit or central processor through which information from the brain's neurons or neurotransmitters gets transmitted to the entire body or the body's five senses, which are sight, smell, feel, taste, and hearing. Other causes of mental illness can range from financial hardships to misfortunes to heartbreaks to traumas to deaths. As a result of this anxiety, stress and depression become tormentors to a person's emotional health and ultimately, to a person's overall mental well-being.

Interestingly, on Tuesday, 10th March 2026, our JNJF widow beneficiaries attended a mental health awareness webinar at the Africell Research Centre at Bathurst Street here in Freetown, where they were reminded about the causes of mental illness as well as how to manage the symptoms that come with the disease.

During the interactive session, our widows asked very important mental-health-related questions that were tailored around some of their experiences with stress, depression, mood swings, anxiety and panic attacks. And with appropriate responses to their questions from the webinar's facilitator, Konima Bachalle-Taylor, who is a mental health expert, our JNJF widows did not only increase their knowledge on mental health issues, but their attendance alone solidifies this claim as the questions they asked and/or the concerns they raised, are questions and concerns that cut across age, gender, culture, tribe, and race. And with their strengthened awareness of the causes, effects, and symptoms management of mental health issues, our widows now remain well-informed on identifying stressors that lead to mental uneasiness, including when to ask for help or who to go to for care or counseling, and also the need to socialize or to belong to a social circle or group, and as well as the importance of keeping an open mind.

Without a shred of doubt, the shared sense of sisterhood among our widows will continue to unite them together. And by doing so, the different communities each is a part of will be empowered, all because of a single mindset serving as the Foundation's motto, which is, "We Rise By Lifting Others."

Indeed, our widow beneficiaries will continue to rise in dignity and in sisterhood, as they continue to be to one another, a sister's keeper.