2025 was great, let’s make 2026 even better
With 2026 already in full swing, we would like to take a moment to thank all our supporters for your generous contributions and involvement during 2025. Thanks to you, we can continue to raise awareness about mental health challenges and fund essential research in this field. Your support helps break the stigma around mental health challenges and in doing so, you are also helping to save lives in the process.
We have many exciting campaigns that we’d like you to diarise for this year. In May, there’s the chance to get active for a brilliant cause by running the Cape Town Marathon (23-24 May 2026) on behalf of The Ithemba Foundation. Crazy Socks for Docs (CS4D) Day on 5 June 2026 will focus on the mental health of medical professionals, and The Ithemba Foundation will once again host the annual Hope Hike event in October, or as we like to call it, HOPEtober.
It is such a privilege to fund new research in the field of mental health. As usual, The Ithemba Foundation will be allocating research bursaries to postgraduate psychology and psychiatry students who meet the specified requirements. If you are interested in applying for one of these bursaries, please click here: Research and bursaries - Ithemba Foundation
Stargazing could help to support mental health
As mental health challenges rise across South Africa, a pioneering research project is turning to an unexpected solution: the night sky. Researchers from Stellenbosch University’s (SU) CoCREATE Health Hub and the International Astronomical Union Office of Astronomy for Development (IAU OAD) are uncovering how stargazing experiences can reduce stress, improve mood and strengthen social connection.
With nearly 40% of South Africans showing symptoms of depression or anxiety, innovative and accessible approaches to mental wellbeing are urgently needed. The pioneering project, Astronomy for Mental Health, is the first of its kind in South Africa to scientifically explore how awe, nature immersion and “cosmic perspective-taking” influence emotional wellbeing.
According to the researchers, the project builds on Kaplan’s Attention Restoration Theory, which explains how natural environments, especially those that gently engage our senses, help the mind recover from fatigue. Growing global evidence shows that awe-filled experiences activate brain regions tied to emotional regulation, reduce cortisol levels and restore a sense of calm.
The team is particularly interested in the "overview effect", a phenomenon described by astronauts who, upon seeing Earth from space, experience a profound shift in awareness and connection to humanity. By inviting ordinary people to look up and reflect on their place in the cosmos, the researchers hope to spark similar feelings of calm, gratitude and belonging here on Earth.
Recently, 14 families from diverse backgrounds joined a guided astronomy weekend, organised by SU’s CoCREATE Health Hub and IAU OAD, in Sutherland, home to some of the world’s darkest night skies and the iconic Southern African Large Telescope (SALT). Preliminary results show that stargazing immediately reduced symptoms of depression and improved participants’ mood. Using a combination of self-report questionnaires, reflective journalling, interviews and focus groups, the team noted a consistent pattern: participants reported reduced feelings of anxiety and low mood within 24 hours of the astronomy experience.
Importantly, the researchers added that stargazing is particularly effective in areas where access to mental health care is limited as it is free, culturally universal and requires minimal equipment.
Source: Stellenbosch University
Different psychiatric disorders may have the same root cause
A new study of psychiatric and genetic records has found that many conditions involve similar genes and may not need to be treated as distinct illnesses. The findings of the paper, published in Nature, could also spare patients the burden of carrying multiple different diagnoses that require an assortment of different pills.
“The kind of medical metaphor I’d offer is that if you went to the doctor with a runny nose, cough and sore throat and you got diagnosed with runny nose disorder, cough disorder and sore throat disorder, and prescribed three separate pills, we would consider that sort of a medical misstep,” said Andrew Grotzinger, one of the authors of the study.
The scientists found that genetic similarities among psychiatric disorders suggest that they fall into five essential categories:
- substance use disorders;
- internalising conditions such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder;
- neurodevelopmental conditions such as autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder;
- compulsive conditions such as anorexia nervosa, Tourette’s syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder; and
- a fifth group that includes bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
“If you look at what the genes are telling us, it suggests that these different categories are more fundamentally related at the biological level than we had thought,” said Jordan Smoller, another author of the paper. The similarities help explain why some antidepressants seem to work, not only for depression, but also for anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Source: The Washington Post