From Silence to Advocacy: Ugandan State Attorney Speaks Out on Bipolar Disorder

Barbara Joyce Abang had set out to earn a master’s degree in Britain when a psychiatric episode put her in hospital. She completed her studies, but returned to Uganda carrying a diagnosis she feared could threaten her legal career.

Now a principal state attorney, Abang is using her experience with bipolar disorder to challenge stigma and push for affordable mental healthcare across East Africa.

In a speech calling for mental health to become a development priority, she recounts how illness disrupted her work, strained her finances and undermined her confidence.

Some of her psychiatric admissions cost more than Shs5 million. Counselling could cost about Shs100,000 per session, before medicines, consultations and follow-up appointments.

“If I, an educated and employed professional, found treatment expensive, what about someone without a job, insurance, or family support?” she asks.

Her account highlights how treatment costs can deepen hardship, even for people with steady employment.

Abang traces her struggle through a period of grief and illness. Her father, whom she describes as her closest friend, developed cancer in 2005 and died in 2007. Around that period, doctors also diagnosed her with hyperthyroidism.

In 2009, she travelled to the University of Birmingham to pursue a Master of Laws. She hoped the change of environment would ease her sadness.

Instead, she experienced a severe psychiatric episode. She heard voices, her behaviour changed and she entered a psychiatric ward far from home. Doctors diagnosed bipolar disorder.

Treatment, family support and help from a university friend enabled her to recover and complete her degree.

Back in Uganda, she resumed government legal work but concealed her diagnosis. She feared colleagues would question her judgement and overlook her abilities.

Further episodes brought hospital admissions and periods away from work.

“I was not lazy. I was not incompetent. I was ill,” she says.

Abang argues that such experiences carry consequences beyond the individual. When illness interrupts the work of teachers, farmers, health workers and public servants, families lose income and countries lose skills.

She urges East African governments to include mental health in national development plans and bring affordable services closer to communities.

Employers, she says, should support staff through treatment and recovery. Seeking care should not count as professional failure.

She also wants people with lived experience to help shape mental health policy.

“Do not invite us only to tell our stories. Invite us to help design the solutions.”

Abang has channelled her experience into the memoir Be Kind to Your Mind and advocacy through Be Kind to Your Mind UG.

Her message challenges the shame that kept her silent: a mental health diagnosis does not erase a person’s skills, dignity or prospects.

“Life may interrupt your dreams, but it does not have to destroy your purpose.”