Building Brighter Futures: Low-Cost Mental Health Support for Mothers

In December 2024, the Harvard Center for International Development (CID) announced the award recipients of the second round of funding from the GEM Incubation Fund, designed to support research that strives to find solutions to pressing development challenges. The recipients of the 2024 GEM Incubation Fund are pursuing research around the theme of gender equity and international development, in line with the theme of CID's annual Global Empowerment Meeting. The report below is the second in a series of updates from research teams funded through the 2024 GEM Incubation Fund.

Community Solutions for Maternal Mental Health in LMICs

Mental health conditions are among the leading causes of disability worldwide, yet in most low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), they remain largely untreated. An estimated 75–90% of people experiencing depression or anxiety in LMICs receive no formal care, due not only to stigma and limited awareness, but also to a severe scarcity of trained mental health providers. This gap can have far-reaching consequences: not just for individuals experiencing distress, but also for those around them. When the person affected is a caregiver, the implications can extend to the development, education, and well-being of entire families, particularly children.

But what if mental health support could be delivered outside the clinic, through simple, structured programs led by community members with no formal psychological training? Could this be a model that scales in low-resource settings, where mental health needs are widespread, but clinical capacity is limited?

That’s the question we’re exploring through a partnership with REDDES, a Mexican NGO with deep experience delivering mental health and parenting programs in low-income settings. With support from CID's GEM Incubation Fund, we launched a project in Ecatepec de Morelos, an urban municipality just outside Mexico City, home to more than 1.6 million people and characterized by high levels of poverty and violence. We launched this project to test whether a brief, low-cost mental health intervention for parents, primarily mothers, can improve their well-being and spill over changes that benefit their adolescent children.

The program, AAyuda+ (AA+), is adapted from the World Health Organization’s Self Help Plus (SH+) protocol, originally developed for use in humanitarian settings. Grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), AA+ helps participants develop emotional regulation skills and reconnect with their values. What makes this model especially promising is that it can be delivered by trained community facilitators, no licensed psychologists required, who guide group sessions using structured audio recordings and illustrated manuals. Additionally, by holding sessions in schools, the program minimizes infrastructure costs and makes implementation more accessible (Figure 2).

In Spring 2025, REDDES implemented the first round of the program. Over five weeks, mothers gathered in local schools to participate in 90-minute sessions designed to foster reflection, support, and coping strategies. The study used a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design: eligible mothers were randomly assigned to either participate immediately or serve in a comparison group. After the program, the research team conducted surveys with both mothers and their adolescent children to measure outcomes.

Our research focuses on several key questions:

• Is AAyuda+ a cost-effective way to improve mothers’ mental health and well-being?
• Does improved well-being lead parents to spend more time and resources on their children?
• Are there measurable impacts on adolescents’ mental health, school engagement, risky behaviors, or aspirations?

The first implementation round included over 600 mothers, and we plan to reach an additional group in Fall 2026. We are currently analyzing results and look forward to sharing findings soon. If the program proves effective, we are eager to explore partnerships with government institutions to scale AAyuda+.

Scaling Mental Health Solutions to Strengthen Families and Build Human Capital

This project not only explores a potentially scalable mental health solution but also sheds light on how parental emotional health and mental well-being may shape intergenerational investments in human capital. As we deepen our understanding of the link between mental health and human capital development, we hope to inform better-designed policies that improve outcomes for both caregivers and children.

This project is led by Raissa Fabregas from The University of Texas at Austin.