Mental Health Worker, The Malachite Center

 Christina Angela Ntulo is a mental health worker with over 26 years of experience, implementing medium to large scale mental health programmes in Africa. Her work started at St Peter School in Nairobi where she initiated it’s the first Early Intervention Programme for children with intellectual and learning disabilities. Through this work she was able to enroll children as young as the age of 3 years offering them a rich mix of therapies that included occupational and speech therapy, life skills development while providing a near to typical school day experience. This program gave these children a greater chance at thriving in their adulthood. 

She then went on to work with the Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA) Kenya where she was tasked to set up its counselling department. During her employment, Christina was able to see a number of clients work through their relational problems to come up with solutions that didn’t require them to go to the court. These included reconciliations between couples, and solving disputes between families and in-laws. At FIDA-K, she was able to support in conversions around equitable distribution of family inheritances and matrimonial property as well as providing therapeutic services to women and girls those who had experienced sex and gender-based violence. 

Christina then moved to Uganda to work for BasicNeeds a UK based charity where she set up Uganda’s first Community Mental Programme. At BasicNeeds she best known for initiating and scaling mental health outreach services that were delivered through local governments to serve people suffering from common and severe mental disorders, such as bipolar disorder schizophrenia, major depression disorder and epilepsy. In addition to this, Christina was also instrumental in building the capacity of the movement of People with a Lived Experience of Mental Illness, who then went on to ensure that Mental Health Treatment Act of 1964 was repealed and Uganda now boosts of one of the most progressive laws for mental health care on the continent. Christina’s leadership at BasicNeeds Uganda fostered a partnership with the Ministry of Health to integrate basic mental health treatment at Health Centre II and III. This integration is evidenced through the recruitment of psychiatric personnel by the districts, distribution of essential medicines for mental health and inclusion of the common mental disorders in the Health and District Management Information Systems (HMIS and DHIS). She was instrumental in the drafting of the many mental health policies that Uganda enjoys today like The Child and Adolescent’s Mental Health Policy, The National Strategy for Mental and Neurological Services just mental and a few. At BasicNeeds, Christina also served as Director for Africa and Director for New Initiatives. 

Christina went on to work with StrongMinds an NGO that delivers group talk therapy for people suffering from depression. Her employment at StrongMinds started as a Mental Health Adviser providing training support to improve quality of services. In 2020, the organization fully boarded her as Deputy Director and she was instrumental in tailoring a group therapy approach that allowed people to continue receiving services during the lock down. Up to around 8500 people who were treated in a period of 6 months attending up to 8 weeks of therapy sessions via phone. During this time, she also introduced and tested delivering the model through the local governments Village Health Team. In 2021, Christina led StrongMinds Uganda’s program team to increase the number of women and girls treated from just over 20,000 in 2019 to 36,000 in 2021 and doubling this result to 82,000 in 2022 while was serving as Country Director. Through Christina’s technical expertise, StrongMinds, was able to set up its first refugee project, adapt its model to delivery group therapy to pastoral communities in Kotido District, develop and scale its approach to treating adolescents in and out of school, and integrate talk therapy as a service to be delivered by Village Health Teams. 

Currently Christina is setting up Malachite Center for Mental Health (The Malachite Center), an NGO that delivers a model of care horned out of 27 years of delivering programs in Africa. The new intervention focuses on delivering services at the workplace with partners like Minet and the CEO Summit. The Malachite Center also has a school intervention for Emotional Literacy and Mental Health Treatment, and also provides quality therapy at their offices in Ntinda. 

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