It’s not only the mad people who wander the streets dressed in rags, talking to themselves, that have mental health issues. People will be surprised to learn that a lot of seemingly healthy and sane people have mental health issues.
Mental health problems covers a very wide spectrum ranging from the clinically insane ( ‘were’ or mad-man) who roam our streets, to those who were born with mental disorders and disabilities and finally to the closet mental health sufferers.
It’s the last group, the closet-mental-health-sufferers, that I want to address here for they are the ones who are most at risk and are either not aware of it or don’t think it’s a problem. These are the people who suffer from depression, anxiety, panic attacks etc. Left un-checked it can lead to hypertension or the individual developing suicidal thoughts.
According to the Commonwealth Health organisation the most commonly diagnosed mental illness in Africa is mood disorders caused by a number of things.
There are a lot of things that can cause an individual’s mental health to deteriorate rapidly: the current economic climate with all the uncertainty, peer and family pressure and undisclosed personal problems.
According to Professor Taiwo Lateef-Shiek, the Medical Director of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital Kaduna, 80% of Nigerians with mental health problems don’t seek proper help: they are more likely to go running to their pastors or babalawos or keep quiet about it. The recent rise in the number of people taking their own lives is a clear indication of this. If there is more awareness people won’t be stigmatised and ashamed to seek help or commit suicide.
In the Western world there are periodic campaigns to alert people to the dangers of concealing a mental health problem – it can happen to anyone! Hollywood giants like the late Tony Scott and Robin Williams committed suicide after years of suffering from depression. And in the UK, recently, the Royal Princes Harry and William openly talked about their battle with depression following the death of their mother, Princess Diana, in 1997.
In Africa, shame and the thought of being stigmatised prevents people from talking about their mental health problems until it is too late. Remember it can happen to anyone and any number of worldly problems can cause a person to lose the plot and go mad.
There is no shame in going to see a qualified practitioner (-definitely not your Pastor!) and discussing your problems. Sometimes all it takes is therapy, pills or a change in direction in life to clear your head. If you keep it to yourself hoping it’ll go away you’re wrong! It’ll only keep on building up and up till one day you’ll explode (- or implode)
Society also has a role to play in this – stop stigmatising people who have mental problems! You see ‘were’ or a mad-person on the street and start laughing at them, abusing them because they happen to be in the unfortunate position of not being able to control their faculties. Do you know what led to them losing their minds and ending up mad on the streets? You don’t know! It could be a catalogue of problems ( – or a man-made curse!) that finally pushed them over the edge. At the end of the day they are somebody’s brother, sister, uncle or mother. Show some empathy!
People with mental health problems just don’t develop it overnight: it starts off gradually. Signs to look out for are erratic behaviour, loss of interest in things and aloofness, mood swings and uncontrollable emotional outbursts. If the problem is dealt with in its infancy the patient has a good chance of a full recovery.
In the absence of a comprehensive mental health care system we have to look out for each other; sometimes all it takes is a shoulder to cry upon, someone to talk to.
And to the charlatan- pastors out there – you can’t cure every mental health sufferer out there with your brand of prayer sessions and God-knows-what: you’re not a qualified psychiatrist who specialises in these matters.
And if you have a mental health problem don’t hide away in shame- seek help! Your very life and well-being might depend on it!
True.The aetiology of mental illnesses is founded upon life events,irrespective of who you are and what you are,the balance between mental well-being and illness is subject to individual coping mechanism (resilience),and primarily,any form of support network,professionally or informally; hence, the shoulder to cry on, or, a listening ear. Any nation will have its norms and values and any deviation from such will cause questionability and stigmatisation or labelling of the deviants as outsiders.
Ina democratic society, things are ordered in ‘near-perfect’ structures such as class and wealth.Ina post-modernist society,it is unthinkable that the upper classes would be subject of materialistic deficiencies to a point where this leads to mental imbalance because there is a supposition of readily available support network.But this is not always the case. The likes of Robin Williams, River Phoenix and lately,Tiger Woods will inform the insightful that wealth does not always mean sanity. When people achieve fame and money but are unable to ‘handle’it, then mental imbalance and behavioural deficits take over. Ironically, Africa,in general, and Nigeria in particular, there are clear indicators that many people fall into one diagnostic criteria or classification (DSM & ICD) under the Neurosis and Psychosis clinical diagnoses. Observe the ‘suffering and smiling’ as a passive-aggressive individual, the ‘thought-broadcasting’ person who is deemed ‘weird’ and un-sociably embarrassing, or the wealthy and famous politician with’narcissistic’ tendency and his/her support group that see nothing wrong wrong with persistent looting of the common wealth. This last category persists in Africa of today, and moreso, in Nigeria. Their sanity is superficial and temporal, outside of their position and loots, there is no substance to their mental well-being. Take for an example, Andrew Yakubu who had billions stashed away but failed to support even his own kin with a fraction of what he’d illegally acquired? Cultism, kidnapping, rape, ritualistic killings,substance misuse; etc, are all founded on deprave-based insanity, remorselessness (psychopathy)just as the obsessive nymphomaniac or kleptomania, the necrofiliac and anorexic/bulimic, all form part of mental imbalance in a human. As ‘too much of anything’ is not good for anyone, the prognosis is not good for many as the persistence of such episodes translates as a form of neurosis – obsessive, and compulsive disorders. It is debatable to claim that a culture community can be mentally unbalanced, but this may be justified in one simple but equally complex scenarion: A top politician has been alleged to have illegally siphoned the state’s funds for his personal use while his subordinates follow suit, then this becomes pyramidal, top-down, to a point where the menial operatives imbibe ‘what they observe at the top, so, any visitor to the top man has to ‘bribe/tip’ their way to the top: A ‘WHY’ of Nigeria’s lack of consistent development and growth. Now,let’s be realistic to assert that many Nigerians have a wide range of mental capacity symptomised by deficiencies to be treated clinically,but masked by individual status and or, false reliance on alternative diabolic pathways, t best, the pseudo-spiritual pathway involving mullahs, pastors and seers, which in itself is another form of delusional belief. Even it is said in the Holy books: physician heal thyself. Talking therapy requires compliance with professional ethics and code of conduct and its practice knowledge and skills are required to be continually updated and upgraded. These set it out apart from the informality of ‘shoulder to cry on’.
The way forward is for individuals to be aware of the aims and purposefulness of talking therapy such as psychotherapy and counselling. It enables clients to gain better insight into what ‘they realise/or do not, to be deficit in their being’ and make appropriate ‘adjustment’ to their mindset and perception of what life and living is all about.(I am a criminologist,academic psychiatrist and psychotherapist)