2024 Pardes Humanitarian Prize Honors Advocate Transforming Mental Health Perceptions in Africa

Many people are not fond of public speaking, but Franca Ma-ih Sulem Yong relished the opportunity after being introduced as the recipient of the 2024 Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health, awarded recently by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) during its International Research Symposium in New York City.

“This place feels like home to me,” said Yong, who was recognized for her work promoting mental wellness in Africa via self-expression, tolerance, and forgiveness. “This is a place where I can share my life experience without feeling shame.”

Yong recounted her challenging and stressful childhood as a girl dealing with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in Cameroon, a country where mental illness was suspected, neglected, and stigmatized. While initially feeling resentful, she started drawing and writing poems in high school to express her feelings—which started a transformative journey. “I could finally build my own narrative,” she said. “It boosted my self-esteem and self-compassion, and also my compassion for others.”

In college, Yong started a campus radio program to spread awareness of mental health, and the affirming response she received led her and some friends to launch Positive Youths Africa, a magazine and community organization aimed at helping young people live positive and purposeful lives. During her time with the group, the magazine sold more than 1 million copies, beyond her wildest expectations.

Her life took another turn in 2018 following the outbreak of Cameroon’s ongoing Anglophone Crisis between the French- and English-speaking regions of the country. As the daughter of an Anglophone father and a Francophone mother, Yong saw the dark heart of a conflict pitting friends and relatives against each other. She turned to her own history and founded the Afrogiveness movement, which uses the principles of forgiveness and the healing power of art therapy to engage and empower those traumatized by armed conflict.

“Franca has an extraordinarily big heart,” said BBRF President and CEO Jeffrey Borenstein, M.D., when presenting the award, named for past APA President Herbert Pardes, M.D., which recognizes an individual or organization whose work has helped advance understanding of mental illness and made a profound impact on the lives of people with mental illness. “She has been a champion of mental health rights and a prominent force for healing in Africa.”

BBRF also awarded an honorary Pardes prize to the Montreal-based Graham Boeckh Foundation, which was created in 1990 by J. Anthony Boeckh and his family to honor their son who died from complications related to schizophrenia. The Boeckh Foundation has been instrumental in establishing Integrated Youth Services hubs across Canada; these centers provide a range of integrated health services for young people ages 12 through 25 with psychiatric illness.

“We agreed to do something simple, so we decided to fix our broken health care system,” Anthony Boeckh joked when accepting the award. ■