By EDITOR
For more than two decades, Associate Professor Simone Honikman has dedicated her career to helping women and their families navigate the mental health challenges that can accompany pregnancy and early motherhood.
As Founder and Director of the Perinatal Mental Health Project (PMHP), she has worked to improve the lives of thousands of women in South Africa while helping to shape maternal mental healthcare across the African continent.
A graduate of the University of Cape Town’s medical school, Simone’s passion for social justice began long before she entered the medical profession. Growing up in a middle-class family during apartheid, she was encouraged by her parents to question authority and challenge injustice. Witnessing the resilience of disadvantaged women sparked a lifelong commitment to improving their lives.
By the age of 12, she had decided she wanted to become a doctor and work in underserved communities. While studying medicine at the University of Cape Town, she recognised the emotional toll medical training was taking on fellow students and established a student advice and support centre that offered counselling and psychological support to students in distress.
After qualifying, she worked in the public health sector in obstetrics, paediatrics, internal medicine and psychiatry before managing the Khayelitsha Cervical Cancer Screening Project.
It was during this time that her life’s work came into focus. Research showing that one in three women in Khayelitsha experienced postnatal depression, together with the devastating suicide of a colleague eight months after giving birth, highlighted the urgent need for accessible maternal mental healthcare.
In response, Simone, and a team of midwives and volunteers, founded the PMHP at Mowbray Maternity Hospital in the early 2000s, pioneering an integrated model of maternal mental healthcare within the public health system.
Today, the PMHP is a nationally recognised organisation. Although based at the University of Cape Town as a founding partner of the Centre for Public Mental Health, it raises its own funding and continues to expand its work so that more women across South Africa can access essential mental health support. Simone comments: “PMHP’s achievements can be attributed to many extraordinary people – our small team, our long-standing volunteers and consultants, and the collaboration with funding partners and thought leaders from all over the country and the globe.”
According to Simone, South Africa has one of the highest rates of perinatal mental health conditions in the world. “Worldwide, about 10% of pregnant women and 13% of women in the year after giving birth experience a mental health condition, primarily depression and or anxiety,” she explains. “In South Africa this is even higher. We estimate that one in three women is affected by these conditions during or after childbirth.”
Pregnancy and the first year after birth can be a particularly challenging time, as many women face multiple pressures at once. Financial hardship, conflicts in relationships, the demands of caring for a new baby and others in the family, as well as other life stresses, can all affect a mother’s mental health and how she is able to manage her life. Without appropriate support, these conditions can have profound consequences not only for mothers but also for their babies and families.
“The importance of mental health is unfortunately often overlooked,” says Simone. “Mental wellbeing is crucial for the woman who is pregnant or has just given birth. When women experience depression, anxiety or other mental health challenges without the support they need, it can affect their own physical health and wellbeing, as well as their ability to fully enjoy and navigate early parenthood and manage stressors in their environment. Because the period from conception to two years is such an important time in a child’s development, ensuring that women have access to timely mental health care benefits mothers, babies and families alike.”
To address these challenges, the PMHP integrates quality maternal mental healthcare into existing maternal and child health services, particularly in low- and middle-income communities. The organisation supports pregnant women, strengthens public health services, partners with NGOs, and trains healthcare and social development professionals so that maternal mental health becomes part of routine care.
Its influence extends beyond South Africa. Through training, research and collaboration in advocacy work, the PMHP has shared its expertise with health professionals and organisations in countries including Lesotho, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Botswana.
“Our mission has driven us to share our expertise and learnings with others working with mothers across Africa,” she explains, “and we have benefitted hugely from innovative work being done across the continent and in other world regions.”
Simone’s pioneering work has earned international recognition. In 2014, she was elected to the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship, which recognises leading social entrepreneurs creating innovative solutions to society’s most pressing challenges.
More recently, she was granted a visiting fellowship at the University of Oxford, as part of the AfOx programme, which enables Africa-based researchers to collaborate with Oxford scholars and further strengthen research and innovation in their fields.
“This recognition has given me access to extraordinary, dynamic and innovative people, working across sectors, working on the African continent and elsewhere, to better the development of their countries,” Simone comments.
From a childhood desire to make a difference to leading one of South Africa’s foremost maternal mental health organisations, Simone’s work continues to ensure that thousands of women receive the care and support they need at one of the most important moments of their lives.
