By Agatha Emeadi
Professor Jude Uzoma Ohaeri is a foremost psychiatrist and medical director of St. Theresa Psychiatric Hospital, Agbala, Owerri North, Imo State. Starting off his career at the University of Ibadan, he rose in his chosen profession to become a professor. For many years, Ohaeri was the only consultant psychiatrist in the whole of Kuwait.
In this interview, he gives deep insight into mental disorder and the worrisome impact of Mkpuru Mmiri, warning that youths must not experiment with the hard drug.
Why is drug abuse very rampant among the youths, especially the new Mkpuru Mmiri?
Well, the most and recently talked about Mkpuru Nmiri is not necessarily the most prevalent, but the one everybody is talking about is the abuse of substances, principally cannabis. Mkpuru Nmiri is just a
catchy name in terms of making noise. The real drug everyone is abusing is cannabis (marijuana). But because people use Mkpuru Nmiri more; then anyone who is crazy or behaving abnormally is termed to be taking it. People get sick for variety of reasons and hard drug is just one of them. Mkpuru Nmiri is bad because it contains methamphetamine which is exogenous. It is bad and people should not take it. It is a mixture of ingredients and added molecules to be cooked it up; i is not in any way unique to us Easterners even though it has an indigenous name.
What I am saying is that it is not just true that anyone who is misbehaving outside is a victim of n Mkpuru Nmiri. First of all, the Mkpuru Nmiri is less easy to obtain than cannabis which means that a lot of things people are manufacturing are fake because they have laboratories where they cook these things; one can also imagine the technology.
The most common mental disorders are really as follows: anxiety especially over someone’s future, for people who are not working, but can longer take care of themselves; frustration from prevailing bad economic circumstances which is a very worrisome factor and so people can react to clinical anxiety. The next is depression, those ones are far more prevalent and sub-clinical supplement. People have all these but do not show up in the hospitals. There are also cases of insomnia where people do not sleep well out of various thoughts not knowing it is a prelude to getting more seriously sick. The more evident of mental disorders are the dramatic ones like madness, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, insomnia, unnecessary singing and clapping. I am saying it with scientific certainty. Again; I think that this phenomenon of morning cry is an avenue for expressing severe mental disorder. People who are involved in early morning cry are not sleeping well; they wake up at 4:00am and start shouting and preaching endlessly, it is also part of joblessness. So, a good number of early morning preachers are sick because it is an avenue of expressing severe mental disorder especially mania. The impression is that anybody who is schizophrenic is assumed to be taking cannabis, it is not true, it has a life of its own, the madness can start without taking any drugs, but the trend is that if one is taking the drug, the fellow is more vulnerable to become sick and it is called the drift hypothesis. It drifts down the social ladder. It makes it more severe and resistant to treatment; and the drug abuse is an illness we have to treat; it is about the most difficult illness for psychiatrists to treat because by nature drug addiction is a recurring illness. The economic downturn contributes a lot. At one end, the youths are idle, and an idle mind is the devil’s’ workshop, so they drift into untoward behaviour, circles and then when they are sick, there is no money for the relatives to pay for their upkeep. It is bad both ways.
Why is it commonly found among the youths?
It is so because the youthful age is the age of experimentation.
What then is the way out?
The best way is good governance which includes everything, the rule of law and social support. People should not abandon their relatives. We have to demystify an old long tradition which says when someone is mad and gets to the market, he cannot be brought back; it is not correct. Such people on the road who are vagrant it is really due to lack of social support and not the severity of the illness; though both work hand-in-hand. Social support is a major thing. If a victim has social support, even without money, the little gain that would have been achieved would be able to maintain it. Why? Because when the patient is brought to the hospital and makes sure he takes his medication; they are very important indices of good prognosis.
Do you really canvass for old people’s homes in Nigeria?
Why do I need to do that when we do not need certain social attitude and structure? Those things do not just come on their own, the fact of having homes is that such societies are structured in a way that one is dependent on social security and welfare programmes that support them. Once a child is 18 years and above, they are out of their parents’ home and could find a job, move into their own apartment, etc. They have social welfare programmes that can support them. The society in such places, you find that the families can afford to withdraw themselves because the larger society will take care of them. Even then, that is not good enough because studies have shown that upon everything that what you call social fragmentation is one of the worst indices of poor outcome, one still needs his or her family. Those societies are the way they are now because they are structured in that way, the attitudes are in that way where one might not see his or her parents because they are being taken care of. Here in Africa, we do not have any of such but our families. Our parents are being taken care of at old age. In foreign countries, they do not have that kind of mechanism; I would rather prefer that we build up the social structures, welfare programmes, job opportunities before we start copying what might not work in our own society and it has no basis here. At a point it will become useful and that will be when our society becomes more cosmopolitan, there is no means of maintaining such instruments now even as there are roles for such instruments but not like the ones we have in the western world.
Paint a picture of your journey to accomplishment, starting from childhood
Well, I come from a village called Umuovum Ulakwo, in Owerri West Local Government Area , Imo State where you grew up. First, one must understand that all fingers are not equal as an adage says; the most important thing is the home, the family. There is never one pathway to growing up; people get to the same point through many ways. In my own case, I would say that frankly speaking, I have been lucky. First, my parents especially my father was an original educationist. To my mother who had only me for some time before my younger ones came, she used to call me ‘doctor’ as long as I could remember, and that got into my brain that I would be a medical doctor. God gave me good brain, I could do well in school, but on my own part, it is a personal discipline, it is not someone pushing me around, one should push himself or herself around. When we were at home in the village, my mother would ask me ‘Jude my son, why don’t you go out and play? There was my own input and reading was my lifestyle. I have always been an intellectual human being, so that is why I say it is luck. There are people who are not intellectual, but more physical, more mechanical and then a pathway to living too. So parents should discipline their children from the outside, while the child disciplines himself or herself from the inside. If the discipline comes from one side, it would crack up. To parents, it is not just to talk, but also to lead by example. One has to be consistent because the children are watching; if one is not consistent, they would grab it and probably use that inconsistency against themselves with what they say and what they do. That is the real thing for parents to do. For the children, they have to follow their tracks while parents help them.
Parents are finding it so difficult to train children these days, what do you think is the problem?
That is not surprising because the world we live in now is aversely different from the one we grew up in.. How many people had land phone and television then except people working with Post and Telecommunications (P&T); it was a rare event? These things were not there then, now it is everywhere. The environment is completely changed. The environment in which they are growing up is quite different; secondly, the economic background only God knows how much school fees parents pay, yet they get poor outing in terms of academic excellence, feeding and moral conduct. Not all schools are giving out their best, some could be described as rather a place of irresponsibility because of poor academics, no facility and discipline to look up to. I remember in my final year as a medical student in University of Ibadan, the government increased the cost of feeding by 25k. We went on rampage for the ‘Ali Must Go’ protest. From what we are seeing today, I do not know if I would have survived this kind of regime. We drove cars as house officers either through a loan facility or cars that parents could provide. Parents pay school fees but refuse to pay hospital bills. I think there is poor attitude to health care delivery system in Nigeria.
Did you have role models then?
All the time, my teachers at the University of Ibadan then were my role models. Among them were Prof Michael Olatawora and Prof. Odejide, who I see as my senior brothers and role models. They were also professors of psychiatry.
Why did you choose psychiatry above other branches of medicine?
During my preclinical training at Melamby Hall, I thought I should be a physician and surgeon, so that when I see any patient, I would not have to defer, I would answer all their need, and that was how I started. In 1976, when I went for psychiatric posting at Lantoro Asylum in Abeokuta, Ogun State, that place was very bad. I was being taught by a German missionary woman, Dr. Hengbeck, and there happened to be a patient who looked so sorrowful and Dr. Hengbeck said the woman had endogenous psychiatry, that they could not find out what was wrong with her. I said, no, a person could not be this depressed and nothing was being found out. I set my mind to find out what was her problem and that was how I became a psychiatrist.
What is your advice to youths regarding Mkpuru Nmiri?
The best advice to youths about Mkpuru Nmiri is this: don’t start, don’t experiment, don’t try to see what is going on, because it swallows one, if one is trying to experiment with drugs, it’s like salt trying to see what water looks like. It will not be recovered.
Again, develop a purpose for your life, track and keep it. People should know about their consciousness. Once that consciousness is impaired, the person is out of the system where we would suggest social support. Do not be alone like an animal, mix and interact with others.