Sound Mental Awards Program: A Campus Conversation on Men's Mental Health and Awards

"Men actually die by suicide, and last month our focus was actually on men, because I think suicide happens after every 40 minutes. Somebody has just committed suicide globally."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"Why men die by suicide mostly is the methods they use. Women use pills, especially. So that is why you find that many women end up attempting suicide but don't actually finalize it. But for men, they use poison, bullets and guns. Some of them actually jump through the cliffs. Others go to the ocean. They use very drastic measures to actually end their life."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"Another sober brain is the one that realizes that this other brain is not functioning properly. So the fact that your friend died, and maybe he had not shared with you, is because you are also not present, unfortunately, to realize that that brain of that friend is not okay."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"We are talking about taking care of ourselves. First of all, it has to start with self. So what are you doing to remain sober? We need to take care of our brains."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"The hypothalamus releases dopamine. I know most of you have heard about dopamine. It's called the feel good hormone. People who take marijuana, people who indulge in substance use or alcoholism, sometimes that hormone is triggered and released in its excessiveness, or sometimes it is suppressed. People who take alcohol, it suppresses, it depresses the brain. When the brain is depressed, it does not release the dopamine in its correct value. That is where you find that sometimes people who indulge in alcohol and substance abuse tend to be very angry."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"When the hormone is suppressed, another part of the brain we call amygdala, that part, when it's activated, it releases negative energy. That is where you find many people become violent when they're in substance use, when they are angry."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"Opinions are a dime a dozen. Just because you have an opinion doesn't mean what you have said is true. One of the main challenges, the sense of duty is not dangerous in itself. The sense of duty becomes dangerous when it is not tied to what is of importance to you, when your sense of duty is only towards others, not what is of importance to you. Now that is maladaptive."
Hudson Mutinda

"The psychological makeup of men and women is slightly different. Men commit more successful suicides, but the study shows that women attempt more suicides. So when we are focusing on suicide as a male problem, I found it can create a false dichotomy in terms of bringing the point clearly."
Hudson Mutinda

"Let's not over pathologize typical male characteristics to make confusion, to create a lot of confusion in the minds of young men."
Hudson Mutinda

"Men's mental health has a big challenge of duty and values. We look at duty to society, duty to self, and duty to families. When raising my brother, the way my mother approaches him is different from us. She's like, when you're going to school, you need pocket money. When it's the boy, she will be like, you're going to school, but you have to find some handiwork to do during the holidays so that you can earn your upkeep."
Faith Agumya

"They feel like, 'I can't show weakness. I can't possibly begin to explain myself because there's no avenue to explain oneself.'"
Faith Agumya

"Most of the friendships remain surface level. They can't even confide in their fellow men about things that are happening to them, because they see me when we are out to drink. They see me as a well kept man, a responsible husband, a responsible citizen. How do I tell them that I have holes? Their lives are well put together."
Faith Agumya

"The continuous duty kind of suppresses the way they respond to conflict, the way they respond to things that have happened to them."
Faith Agumya

"Last month, we lost two young boys around 12 and 13 to suicide in a certain school. These boys were abused by some neighbor of theirs who were related. The parent kept loaning his sons to go and always help out the neighbors, and the neighbor kept abusing his boys, but they know they have to come back. No one is going to listen to them because they are expected to only respect their elders and just be there to serve."
Faith Agumya

"There's a very big gap between generations. There's before the digital age and after the digital age. Most of our parents are before the digital age and are now navigating parenting young people of the digital age. They're learning on the job."
Faith Agumya

"Last year we launched fireside chats where we call people older than us to share their stories of resilience, to share how they were groomed and brought up. My mom made it a no phone area. By 9pm, the phone sleeps in a room. All of us, your phones have to sleep in a room. You get your phone in the morning at 7am. That's a must. It has carried on for now three years, and I know as I'm here, wherever I am by 9pm, no WhatsApp, no words, I'm just reading a book or writing."
Faith Agumya

"The family is the smallest unit in society. The many problems that we are finding out in the society, if our families were stable, even the church, the society, and the country will be stable. But you find out that the problems are starting at home."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"We have taken the boy child challenge and looked for volunteers. The sponsor from the US does not even have a boy child, the child is a toddler, a young girl, but he wanted to mentor boys. I went to look for a volunteer whose child is schooling in that school, and he told me, 'I cannot come and volunteer for free. Give me something.' But the man's child is in that school, a boy, but he wants to be paid to come and mentor that child."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"There is a Kikuyu saying that a man is his voice. If you cannot voice it by being absent, then you might not get the respect that you would otherwise wish for. Men, after they retire, in the third year they are gone. You need to be there for your children, physically present."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"There are many families lacking a male figure than families lacking a female figure as a parent. When I go back to history, asking the generation of my parents, they tell me it was not a very common phenomenon for single parent families to exist. But nowadays, when I visit high schools and talk to them, I find there is a large number of children with single parents than when I was there."
Hudson Mutinda

"The role of the father in the household has been trivialized in many households. You find someone saying, 'You can grow up without a father.' When you grow up with that mindset, you've trivialized the role of the father in the family."
Hudson Mutinda

"Men and women bring different psychological benefits to the child. When children grow up, they learn through Bandura's social learning theory, one of the techniques is observation and mimicry. If we grow a large generation of young people who have psychological disconnect with their fathers, we might not see it now, but the problem of sociological changes, the results are not immediate. They come 10 years down the line."
Hudson Mutinda

"Good intentions might pave the way to hell. You might want to say something with good intentions, but the consequences of these acts might lead to hell. Giving solutions to problems not fully understanding might create more problems than solutions."
Hudson Mutinda

"There are things we need to put our focus on. Times may be so challenging. The males today have things different from what we admired. We need to look at how we involve indigenous knowledge within society. In the past, it was not easy to find those people with mental health conditions. It was very rare, but today it is becoming an epidemic."
Health worker

"We need intergenerational dialogue. I cannot go to my age mate and share with him what is in me, but I can go to another age group above me and share with him, and he'll guide me. Nobody is ready to approach counselors who are age mates. We need to include different generations in mental health management."
Health worker

"When you compare the men of 1995 and the men of 2025, both are poor. But one has advantage because their father or grandfather was poor when fighting colonization, but they had land. Today, what do they have? Just a phone. When talking about men and mental health, you also look at the dispensation, what were they doing, and what do we have to do today?"
Audience member

"Before you feel entitled to someone else's feelings and sanity, are you a safe space? We are quick to judge. If your father came and told you, 'I lost my job, I can't afford to pay tuition anymore,' what's your first reaction? The first reaction is to be like, 'How am I going to survive?' not asking him for a solution."
Faith Agumya

"Everyone is learning on the job. All of us are learning on the job. Your parent is a parent for the first time. Your spouse is your spouse for the first time. I think it's just extending grace to one another and changing the way we speak."
Faith Agumya

"Be slow to speak and quick to listen. More listening and less speaking. The more you listen, the more someone might not even say anything, but the fact that you will always listen, the person feels more confident to always come and tell you."
Faith Agumya

"Are you a safe space? Are you very short tempered? Are you quick to react? Are you judgmental? Do you think you have the right to ask someone to confide in you?"
Faith Agumya

"That is exactly what we are talking about. Crying is a problem to most of you. How will you be strong mentally and emotionally if you can't cry? I think you need to normalize crying. Crying is therapeutic."
Mary Josephine Njambi

"Opinions are a dime a dozen. Just because you say something with more conviction does not make it true. Crying might be therapeutic, I don't know, it might be true. But we are different. We all made differently. Something I like us to understand: when we don't understand psychological differences in our makeup, we'll try to use the same treatment for a different patient. Is crying good? Crying can be good to some people, crying cannot be good to some people, because we are all made differently. Therapy is person centered."
Hudson Mutinda

"I can remember the last time I cried. It was the last day football was ending, in July. I was watching a game with my friend, she's a girl, and when you get close to someone, you can share more intimate things about yourself. As I'm talking, I realized that the neglect I experienced growing up, emotional, physical, sort of caught up to me as an adult. Even in therapy, when you're talking to someone, that's when you see yourself a bit better. It was a good experience. Was a bit embarrassing, but I would rather that embarrassment than carrying all this luggage and trauma in the past, because sometimes the only way you can revisit is through tears."
Hudson Mutinda

"This book was inspired by my personal account and losing my best friend to suicide. I noticed there are misconceptions that people have about suicide that are just not okay. We look at, yes, the person has gone, but we forget to know how we are going to care for the family after. The people that were close to those people, there's no help at all for those people after. Most cases, society isolates them totally."
Faith Agumya

"Here I share how we can help those families, how we can identify the subtle signs within our friends, our families, our people, and ways we can help."
Faith Agumya

"Even Dr. Ndetei herself had told my family, I might recover or not recover. You see, it was 50/50. But we thank God. That's why I am here today."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"In case they learn you are mentally sick, you have to leave work. It's not easy. Relationship, the same thing. In case they learn you have a mental illness, they cut you off. It has been a tough journey."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"Before I did that, I talked to God. I told God, I'm not doing this because I want to, but I've had a hard time. While God used to speak to Elijah and Moses, He spoke to me, because I had a voice telling me, 'I will take care of you.'"
Joy Catherine Njeru

"I normally tell myself, the difference of mental health is to choose to stay and not want to die."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"I only had a Standard 8 certificate when I fell sick. But today, I have a degree in counseling psychology from the University of Nairobi, class of 2022."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"Even to come to a venue like this one and encourage people, I even get calls from friends who were scared, telling me, 'Remember you talked to us, and here we are.' So don't worry, even if you have a mental health condition, it is manageable."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"Irrespective of whatever you go through, this life is too short. Whether you get HIV, whether you get cancer, have meaning. Because you are important. This world is incomplete without you."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"Just pray God to give you a labor of hope, at least to not be a burden. Even when everybody had given up on me, even part of family supported me so much. But it was like my future was looking bleak, so there was no hope. But eventually, I managed."
Joy Catherine Njeru

"I mostly focus on community based mental health and social support, emotional intelligence, and digital wellness. My area of operations are informal settlements, mostly Mukuru and Mathare ya Kibera. I've been writing thought provoking articles and working with organizations including Danish Red Cross, Canadian Red Cross, Columbia University, and IREX. I've been working with young people, youth between ages 18 to 30 years old, with a bias to men."
Albert Migowa

"The things you do, you don't do expecting a reward. You just do them, and it's others who recognize them and sometimes point it out to you. So this is one of those things that I'm truly honored to be up here for, and I'm grateful to God for the opportunity. Encouraging everyone to do their small things, it just shows up somewhere in life."
Joy Waithera Mwangi

"My name is Samuel Mbithi. I go by the name The Vulnerable Man on social media. The reason I picked that name is because I'm not vulnerable, but it is the men that are vulnerable. I advocate against GBV. I'm a survivor of GBV when I was 20 years old. I got burned by a lady I knew. I kept that story for 12 good years. Two years ago is when I started opening up about the story and telling men that they can come out clean, talk about the experiences, talk about mental health, what they have gone through, and they get help. I also visit a lot of children's homes. This is not my award. This is an award towards the people who have really supported me."
Samuel Mbithi

"A few years ago, I fell into active addiction. I went to rehab. And when I left rehab, God gave me an organization called Save Them. It is an organization for the boy child drug and substance abuse and mental health issues."
Noah Solonka Tonko

"People ask, 'Daffina, why is it men are talking to you? Are you really for the boy child more than the girl child?' My question is, if the girl child can be empowered, why should the boy child not be empowered? Today, as I receive this award, I receive it as a voice to the voiceless, those who cannot speak in the society."
Daffina Ambuso

"Thank you for everyone who fought and felt that this matters. Thank you for everyone who has spoken for me. Things that I'd never say, but they brought me here. That's all I can say. I'm so, so grateful."
Joy Waithera Mwangi

"He started an organization in 2018 called Okuwa Maisha in Mathare. The work was simple. Picking each and every child when a parent could not pay the fee. He used to bring them all to a school where they would study for free. We would ask him, 'How will you pay the teachers?' And he did not even have money. He would say, 'Leave it to God. God will bring the money.' He used to do that until 2023 when he died. This good work he used to do, I came in. I said, I will continue with it. And I am doing it until now."
Gladstone Obuamu