Mental health

StrongMinds

Research summary, last reviewed May 2026. US 501(c)(3), EIN 46-2090059. Official site.

Independent recognition: Charity Navigator 4/4 stars, 100% score · Founders Pledge recommended · Happier Lives Institute top-rated

Headline outcome: 426,642 people treated for depression in 2024

What does StrongMinds do?

StrongMinds delivers group interpersonal psychotherapy (IPT-G), a WHO-endorsed talking therapy for depression, through trained lay community facilitators rather than scarce clinical specialists. People are screened with the PHQ-9 depression questionnaire, and those who meet the clinical threshold join free weekly 90-minute group sessions held in community spaces such as halls and schools. The model is deliberately designed for places where depression is widespread and clinicians are rare: most participants are women and adolescent girls in Uganda and Zambia, with extensions into refugee settlements, schools and prisons.

Founder Sean Mayberry, a former diplomat and public-health social marketer, started StrongMinds in 2013 after reading a landmark 2003 trial in rural Uganda showing that lay-delivered group therapy dramatically reduced depression. He funded the first eighteen months from family savings. By 2024 the organisation treated 426,642 people in a single year, bringing the cumulative total to nearly 900,000 since 2014, while driving the cost per person treated down from $109 in 2019 to $23 in 2024.

Why did EveryDrop choose it?

StrongMinds passed our four-stage vetting assessment: a clearly aligned charitable purpose (advancement of health), no evidence of undue private benefit, no evidence of public disbenefit, and no undue restrictions on access. Treatment is free, selection is by depression score rather than identity, and the 2024 accounts received an unqualified independent audit.

It holds a 4/4-star Charity Navigator rating with a perfect 100% score, weighted heavily on impact and measurement, which reflects that StrongMinds publishes evaluable outcome data rather than only financial disclosures. Founders Pledge has recommended it since its 2019 evaluation, and the Happier Lives Institute rates it among the most cost-effective charities in the world at improving wellbeing.

How effective is it?

The honest answer is: clearly effective, with genuine expert disagreement about how effective. The foundational evidence is strong: the 2003 randomised trial in Uganda, published in JAMA, found that after group therapy only 6.5% of participants still met the criteria for major depression, against 54.7% of controls. StrongMinds’ own 2025 research found a shortened six-week course performed as well as or better than eight weeks.

Evaluators then diverge on magnitude. The Happier Lives Institute (November 2024) estimates StrongMinds is around 5.3 times more cost-effective than direct cash transfers at improving wellbeing. GiveWell (March 2023) estimates it at roughly 25% as cost-effective as its own marginal grants, within a wide range of 5% to 80%, and has not recommended it as a top charity. The analyst SoGive lands in between. Crucially, no evaluator disputes that the programme helps; the disagreement is about how much benefit per pound, driven by methodological questions such as how to weigh wellbeing measures and household spillovers.

What are the open questions?

We publish what we are monitoring as well as what we like. The biggest is the evaluator disagreement above, which we surface openly rather than picking a side. Feeding it is a 2024 randomised trial (Baird et al., run with BRAC Uganda rather than StrongMinds’ core programme): among adolescent girls, partly in conflict-affected areas, therapy alone produced no persistent mental-health gains at 16 months, though therapy plus cash transfers did improve outcomes. The delivery context differed from StrongMinds’ standard adult programme, but it is the most important counterweight in the evidence base. Separately, StrongMinds’ 2024 programme expense ratio was 59.4%, below the roughly 65 to 70% watchdog benchmarks; this is partly explained by the wind-down of its US-domestic programme at the end of 2024 and its multi-entity accounts, and Charity Navigator still awards it full marks, but we flag it rather than bury it. We re-check all of this at every annual review.

Sources

This summary is derived from EveryDrop's internal vetting dossier, prepared under our four-stage assessment framework using public, verifiable sources. Assessments are re-checked every twelve months. If you spot something we should know, email [email protected].