Reimagining Mental Health Through Decolonial Lenses: A Qualitative Meta-synthesis of African Experiences and Interpretations

This project aims to systematically examine how mental health is understood, experienced, and supported within African contexts when viewed through decolonial and indigenous knowledge frameworks. Mental health scholarship has historically been dominated by Eurocentric paradigms, often overlooking local epistemologies, cultural logics, community-based healing practices, and historical power dynamics shaped by colonialism. This qualitative meta-synthesis seeks to address that gap by bringing together existing qualitative studies that explore African meanings, interpretations, and experiences of mental health and psychological wellbeing. The review will synthesise themes across diverse cultural settings, languages, and methodological traditions, drawing attention to how individuals, families, and communities conceptualize distress, healing, resilience, identity, and personhood in ways that may differ from biomedical assumptions. It will also examine how colonial histories, social structures, and indigenous worldviews shape mental health narratives and influence help-seeking behaviours, therapeutic relationships, and community support systems. Due to lack of institutional access, searches will focus on open-access databases, Google Scholar, AJOL, and hand-searching reference lists. Through this synthesis, the project seeks to generate a more contextualised and culturally grounded understanding of mental health in Africa. The ultimate goal is to highlight pathways for transforming mental health promotion, policy, and practice by centering African perspectives, decolonial thought, and indigenous knowledge systems.