By Cosmas Omegoh
It is official. Many Nigerians are becoming increasingly inflicted with mental sickness without knowing it.
That man, woman, Okada rider, that angry bird, charging at you might just be one of the many floating down the road, mentally sick. They might not have begun running amok, naked, yet they are sick and do not know it; they need help.
That the individual howling at you, that fellow raining curses or abuses at you for a reason too little to be considered serious could just be sick mentally too.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently startled Nigerians with a revelation of how mentally sick many are among the populace. Going by statistics provided by the WHO, the problem is huge.
According to WHO, “three out of 10 Nigerians have one form of mental illness or the other.”
It lamented that “presently there is no mental health legislation in Nigeria.”
WHO further stated that “the increase in cases of depression is traceable to multi-factorial intra and interpersonal issues, which lead to suicidal death in the country and this requires urgent attention.”
It noted that “Nigeria has only 130 psychiatrists with over 20 million citizens suffering from mental disorders.
“With the few functional mental-health facilities and inadequate mental health practitioners in the country, mental health cases are left for traditional practitioners, hence the upsurge in mental health in Nigeria.”
The concerns of the WHO were amplified days ago in the House of Representatives, following a motion titled “Need to Address the Rising Cases of Mental Health in Nigeria” brought by Hon. Uchechukwu Nnam-Obi from Rivers State.
Figure likely higher than declared
Now, the questions many are asking are: “Are the WHO figures real? Do Nigerians have such number of mentally sick people?”
Now, Nigerian experts in the field of mental health have added their voices to the claim, agreeing that the figures quoted might even be much higher.
A psychotherapist, Dr Smart Chongo, founder, Smart Suicide Prevention Initiative, expressed worry over the WHO revelation, declaring it an affirmation of the reality.
“We are worried about this development. In fact, to say the least, I’m scared. I fear for Nigerians because it shows that mental-health ailments are on the rise,” he said.
He wants everyone to know that mental-health afflictions are now everywhere; one doesn’t have to look far to see a sufferer.
“There are a lot mental cases all around us right now. They are just at our corners, inside our homes and among our family members; even many of us are sick but do not know it.”
Expressing similar sentiment, Dr Charles Umeh, a consultant clinical psychologist at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), Idi Araba, Lagos, said that the WHO figure was high.
“I followed the discussion, and concluded that a lot more Nigerians have mental-health issues. I so much felt for this nation.
“It is just that we have been having a dearth of data in Nigeria. If you dig deeper, the figures you will get will likely be higher.”
WHO mental-health definition
Dr Umeh says “usually, what we consider as metal health here are severe cases of mental and behavioural disorders.
“But WHO definition of mental health is not only the absence of severe cases. When someone is not functioning as he should or cannot cope with his everyday life situation, when one is not contributing to the society, meaningfully, he is said to be having mental-health disorder. If you follow that definition religiously, you will discover that only very few Nigerians are free.”
Many Nigerians truly challenged
Umeh also said: “Truly, many of us who cannot cope with life challenges are always having breakdowns.
“Just do a vox pop or stand at a point of the road and monitor people, you will see unprovoked aggression here and there. Such is coming because of people’s inability to cope with their everyday stressors, especially people living in a city like Lagos, who are under severe stress.”
He pointed at the new trend in substance use and abuse, and asked: “Are they not major factors in our mental health? Is that not on the rise?
“In Lagos, is there no street you walk through and not smell cannabis? These are pointers to the kind of youths and adults we now have.”
Mental health might run in genes
Dr Chongo told our correspondent that “there could be things we inherited from our parents that run in the blood causing mental- health issues,” although “the association between genetics and suicide is very complicated, just as we know that research has shown that there is a genetic component to suicide.”
However, this tendency he noted, “is only one out of the many factors that might drive an individual’s suicide risk. We must not also forget that even if an individual is at risk of suicide, that doesn’t predict whether he will actually go on with the act.
“But genetic research has actually showed that some psychiatric conditions, including many suicidal tendencies, are actually influenced by genetics.”
Individual differences in mental health
Chongo explains that “people are depressed by so many different reasons. What one goes through and comes out smiling, another might go through the same and never come out of it. But then, environmental issues can influence our depression.”
He added: “But right now, there is a sharp rise in suicide rates judging by the calls we receive. And most of such suicidal tendencies are as a result of economic reasons.”
Other causes of mental health
Aside from substance use, Umeh says Nigerians are becoming sicker nowadays because “there is a lot of stressors in our everyday life and we have family dysfunction too.
“You can hardly see up to 10 families without distress. Can you see divorce cases going on with the children usually as the victims? Some of them go into substance use.
“The family is the engine of emotional stability, and when you don’t guarantee that to the kids, what happens?”
He also pointed at unemployment as one big problem killing Nigerians. “Can you imagine not having money, and yet there are kids to take care of? If you cannot imagine where to get money to take care of their needs, what happens next?”
How to help mentally-challenged people
Chongo believes that everyone in the society can help to change the narrative, explaining: “This situation might grow worse if we don’t rise up now, and do more by sensitising and educating our people and ensuring that we show empathy and concern.”
“The social media has really helped us, but it actually distances us. We just see a nice picture online and feel everything is okay with our friend or relative, but that is untrue. Just reach out to that person – a call or text message can go a long way. Sympathise with people, empathise with people. It is not all about giving them money. Try and listen to them. That in itself is therapeutic; it brings healing.”
How individuals, families can avoid future mental health
Individuals and families eager to save themselves future mental stress might as well listen to Dr Umeh. He says: “In every situation, there is one factor you cannot rule out – individual resilience when we are being pushed by circumstances around us.
“The people’s threshold of tolerance of people often gets whittled down by the circumstances around them. That is why everyone is fretting.
“Nonetheless, there are still some people who cope with some of those circumstances based on the resilience they had built over time. And that is what we try to do when we have people with such very high level of stressors in their environment.
“Most of these stressors are determined by the interpretation we give to them. And so, many of us can or can’t adapt to the circumstances we find ourselves. But not everyone has that ability. And so, in clinic, we try to build that ability, knowing that no condition lasts forever. We try to look at the situation we find ourselves as a challenge and then come up with ways of coping with them while expecting an improvement.”
He advised parents to let kids in school learn one skill or the other as part of self-development programme so that if they graduate and don’t have a job, that skill will feed them, pending when they have a good job. “That way they will deal with their financial issues. They will have a foundation to build on.”
More importantly, he noted that “we need to go back to proper upbringing. We have lost our moral values over time. And these are the things that would sustain us – the values that are instilled in us. One of them is hard work.”
He lamented that “hard work has been eroded entirely because no one cares to know how you have made your money so long as you have it. And that is why little kids now do all manner of things. That was why three little kids left Delta State recently to Benin City to hustle, to do Yahoo, Yahoo. While I was analysing those kids, their boldness and their determination, I wondered what the society has instilled in them – an easy way out of their problem? I think that is a big issue for us. So, we need to go back and teach our children that there is dignity in labour.”
Role of government
For Dr Chongo, time has come for the government to weigh in on the situation threatening the society.
“The government should please get up and do something. It needs to support NGOs and government hospitals to help suicidal cases.”
He wants the government to also “decriminalise suicide attempts, because as it is now, suicide is a crime in Nigeria. If you attempt it and survive, you are jailed for that. But a suicidal case may have malaria or typhoid fever or HIV, and needs help.”
He also called on the National Orientation Agency to raise awareness on how people can live their lives.
“They should also try to help people who lost their loved ones via suicide, and relate with them, because stigmatisation is a serious factor here. We need to make people understand that they don’t need to stigmatise people who are depressed or lost somebody via suicide.”
He nudged the government to enact mental-health laws in Nigeria as “nothing regulates our mental health activities. You cannot walk up to anybody and say ‘oh your metal behaviour is bad, you need medication; you need treatment; go to this facility.”
He lamented that mental health issues have been relegated to the background, recalling that “in the past, people didn’t believe that mental health was an issue. They only ascribed it to spiritual powers and beliefs.”