Hospitals in Nigeria lack personnel to manage mental illness 

On Thursday, a medical doctor, Iyanuoluwa Balogun, from the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Aro in Abeokuta, declared that most hospitals in Nigeria lacked medical personnel to manage mental health issues.

She lamented that this development is making early detection of mental illness almost impossible in the country.

She made this disclosure at a programme organised by the National Association of SeaDogs Pyrate Confraternity, Ash Montana Deck, in collaboration with Grund Zero Deck and Long Island Deck in commemoration of this year’s World Mental Health Day. 

Balogun, who described mental health, which involved emotional, psychological and social well-being, as critical to the well-being of the people, said mental health care assessment is a fundamental human right for all citizens that the government needs to make available to all.

 While noting that mental health is a universal human right, she emphasised that brain drain and the exodus of medical practitioners to Europe and other continents are affecting mental health care delivery in Nigeria.

According to Balogun, “brain drain and the exodus of medical practitioners is affecting mental health care delivery, thus reducing the number of psychiatric doctors, nurses and social workers in our hospitals. All these factors hinder the accessibility of mental health care in the country. Mental illness in Nigerian society is still not as widely accepted as other illnesses are.

People tend to discriminate and stigmatize people with mental illness. People attach mental illness to some myths, making society isolate people with mental illness.

“Isolation, stigmatisation and discrimination further cause more harm to the patient. The society needs to be well educated in mental health issues so that people can come out to seek for health.

“Many are going into gambling to make more money, which results in ‘addiction’, which is a mental illness, people also take to substance abuse in the view of forgetting their pains, which is very dangerous to one’s mental health.

“The society should come together and allow people to be open to talk about what they are going through in order to be able to seek help. People who talk about suicide or similar complaints should be taken seriously, as depression is real.

“Children and teenagers also need to be monitored,  according to the doctor and not just waved off that they have no emotions that can lead to mental illness. Inability to sleep, loss of appetite, weight loss, excessive sadness or moodiness and self-isolation can be a cause for alarm or could be a cause for investigation as to someone’s mental state, “she posited.