Dr Etheldreda Nakimuli
Associate Professor
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Plot 51-59 Nakiwogo Road
Entebbe
Uganda
Etheldreda Mpungu Nakimuli is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, based at LSHTM’s MRC Unit in Uganda. She develops and evaluates culturally appropriate mental health interventions for Africans. Her research focuses on the mind-body connection, examining the impact of psychotherapy on physical health and its underlying mechanisms.
Dr. Nakimuli empowers health workers through her virtual SEEK-GSP Academy, fostering mental health capacity building across the African continent. She has won accolades, including the 2016 Elsevier Foundation Award, the 2016 Presidential National Independence Medal of Honor, the 2020 BBC 100 Women, the 2021 Makerere University Outstanding Social Innovation in Health Award, and the 2023 US Mission Outstanding Alum in Health Award. In 2023, she was elected to the Executive Committee of the World Psychiatry Association (WPA) Psychotherapy Section. and later appointed as a Council Member representing Uganda on the World Federation of Psychotherapy Council. With medical and doctoral training from Makerere and Johns Hopkins Universities, and funding from organizations like Grand Challenges Canada and the Wellcome Mental Health Data Prize-Africa, Dr. Nakimuli-Mpungu is committed to advancing mental health research and practice in Africa.
Affiliations
Teaching
Dr. Nakimuli is an experienced educator and mentor dedicated to building mental health research and service capacity in Africa. She teaches and supervises students at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels, particularly in psychiatry, epidemiology, and global mental health. Her teaching focuses on culturally adapted psychotherapy, the integration of mental health into primary care, and the use of implementation science in low-resource settings.
As the founder of the SEEK-GSP Academy, she provides virtual training in Group Support Psychotherapy to a wide range of learners—including community health workers, psychologists, nurses, and social workers—equipping them with skills to deliver mental health support across diverse contexts. She also contributes to curriculum development and capacity strengthening in academic institutions, including Makerere University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and actively mentors early-career researchers. Through her teaching, Dr. Nakimuli-Mpungu champions the use of locally relevant, evidence-based strategies to address Africa’s mental health treatment gap.
Research
Dr. Nakimuli’s research focuses on advancing mental health equity in Africa through the development, evaluation, and scale-up of culturally adapted, evidence-based psychotherapies. Her work targets vulnerable populations such as people living with HIV, children, adolescents, and caregivers in crisis-affected settings. A core strand of her research explores the mind-body connection, examining how group and tele-support psychotherapy not only alleviates mental distress but also improves physical health outcomes by influencing biological, psychological, and social mechanisms.
As a recipient of the Wellcome Mental Health Data Prize: Africa (2024–2026), Dr. Etheldreda Nakimuli-Mpungu is leading a research project aimed at investigating the causal mechanisms through which Group Support Psychotherapy (GSP) alleviates depression among people living with HIV in Uganda. This initiative builds upon her previous work demonstrating the effectiveness of GSP in improving both mental and physical health outcomes. The current project focuses on analyzing existing data to identify the specific components of GSP that contribute most significantly to its success. Insights gained from this research are intended to refine the intervention, enhance training protocols for lay health workers, and inform strategies for scaling up mental health services in low-resource settings.
Her work in implementation science assesses the cost-effectiveness and scalability of these interventions, aiming to integrate them sustainably into health systems in alignment with national and global mental health priorities. In addition, she leads longitudinal studies using African birth cohorts to identify early-life predictors of depression and incorporates mechanistic investigations such as neurocognitive and epigenetic analyses. Her preventive focus emphasizes youth mental health, developing early interventions for children and adolescents in humanitarian and post-conflict contexts, while addressing the socioeconomic, developmental, and educational consequences of untreated mental illness. Her transdisciplinary approach bridges psychiatry, public health, epidemiology, digital innovation, and community empowerment to transform the landscape of mental health care in Africa.
Selected Publications
