Hammond captures both the deplorable conditions that the mentally ill endure and the overwhelming challenge that mental health workers face with limited resources and inadequate or failed systems health care systems in which the mentally ill have the lowest priority.

Interviews with both the incarcerated mentally ill and those working to heal them - secular mental health workers and both Christian and Muslim faith healers - provide blunt evidence of the past trauma and current suffering of his subjects and the challenges and frustration of those struggling with limited resources to find ways to address the needs of vast numbers of mentally ill. Shame and prejudice based on traditional and religious beliefs about mental illness add cultural obstacles to the effective treatment of the mentally ill in many regions of Africa.

Condemned includes work shot in: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan and Uganda. Hammond produced this work over a period of seven years using his own resources, support from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting, and finally using crowd funding to complete the project.

Read an interview with Robin Hammond here.