Our Society vs Our Mental Health:
Creating a Firm Magna Carta for our Mental Health Well-being in Nigeria.
The dangers of mental health crisis in Nigeria is undeniably directly proportional to other social issues such as Boko Haram, Herdsmen attacks, Corruption, Rape and Ethnocentrism or Xenophobia. I have reasons to believe that our mental health crisis on certain levels has an interwoven causal effect on some issues we face in the society today. First, let me explain what I understand to be mental health. According to a publication in The Journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology by Fusar-Poli Paolo, et al, a good mental health is a state of well-being that allows individuals to actively soldier through the everyday stress of life and function productively. This also means that it is important to pay attention to our mental health regularly as we function in the world and encounter life’s obstacles and suffering.
In this publication I am more inclined to comment on the attitude of an average Nigerian towards mental health disorders and measures we seem to consider in our bid to fix the issues likened to the poor state of our psychological well-being in the country. I will argue that the global responses to mental health disorders are usually preventive approaches that are evidence based and have proven to be reliably successful over time. A good mental health is interwoven with features such as (i) the ability to identify and portray a well-managed series of positive and negative human emotions (ii) the ability to orient yourself in a way that helps you cope and manage change and uncertainty (iii) and the willingness to maintain good relationships with people around you and beyond. These features equally have an effect on our attitude toward mental health disorders and our existing social response to issues that may present themselves to us in need of repair within the sphere of mental health.
This idea is the underlying basis for my commentary on the need for Nigerians to adopt new approaches or review our existing preconceptions on issues relating to mental health. It is important that we are able to place priority on the customary approved and evidence-based methods used by other societies to deal with these issues; the need to rely on the most effective and reasonable approaches that have multiple and plausible impact towards the bid to positively regulate the issues of mental health disorders or other related issues of mental wellbeing. For example, our society’s first instance thought or reaction to an individual suffering from a severe case schizophrenia is to consult an exorcist or a religious figure to deal with the situation thereby acting in contrast with the proven methods of treatments such as the use of antipsychotics and other effective therapeutic measures like cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), cognitive enhancement therapy (CET) and Individual therapy. However, the communal stigma that is usually associated with these mental disorders usually make it difficult for people to seek help and thus deny the victims a chance for early intervention that could help fix the situation at first instance.
In a similar pattern, our society is arguably negligent of mental health disorders like anxiety (such as obsessive-compulsive disorder), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), personality disorders (such as Borderline Personality Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and several other common disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and suicidal thoughts/feelings. Like schizophrenia, these mental disorders are equally damaging to the well-being of individuals and the sufferers are equally subjected to a significant degree of stigmatisation. For example, depression has proven to be a serious mental illness in Africa and in Nigeria for decades and in recent times the evidence of its damaging impact is more cognisant. The recent negative development in the Nigerian Army where a depressed officer shot and killed a colleague is a practical illustration of how mental health disorders tend to subtly but firmly have some negative contributory impact on the daily affairs of our society.
In another instance, there is an increasing concern on the mental health of Africans during this pandemic era. The Harvard Gazette in a recent publication referred to the fact that ‘life under lockdown has worsened in South Africa regardless of the social inequality that already exist’. Drawing from this reality, we ought to have concerns about the mental health of people living in such conditions in South Africa and other countries like our beloved Nigeria. We therefore have reasons to believe that mental health issues are currently on the rise and we also have novel incidences as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. On the flip side, the question is how can we possibly keep our mental health in check whilst navigating through the fabrics of the uncertainty upon us?
I have been able to review some existing answers to this question on what should be done and how we ought to orient our mental health during and after this pandemic and I am convinced that the most effective approach will require an objective and realistic approach that is parallel with the existing practices that have proven overtime to be effective and backed by scientific data. Firstly, we need to rely on proven medical and psychiatric treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy, group therapy, psychoanalytic therapy, dialectal behaviour therapy and psychoeducation. I am also convinced that Africans of all social and economic classes can find ways to review their existing perspectives on mental health and begin to make slow but incremental progress towards the consultation of established approaches requisite for mental health crises, our graduates of psychology will also find reasons to pragmatically dust off their psychology degrees and set up private practice and other similar institutions that will cater for the mental health crisis looming in our societies. This process will also go against our inherent superstitious and religious presuppositions that have evidently failed to provide a logical or reasonable solution to the deteriorating state of mental health issues faced by Nigerians.
This realisation brought me to the conclusion that we ought to consciously take proactive steps to adopt a structure that shares some parallel with the principles of Magna Carta and free ourselves from any social structure that hinders Africans from exercising our rights to choose the effective, progressive and evidence based measures that will help everyone on the continent promote good mental health practices. Drawing from these discussions I have outlined thus far, I am convinced that the most real structure of being is that which has permanently proven to us in the world as worthwhile and has manifested itself in a series of evidential situations. In effect, although our existence on earth is interwoven with endless instances where we had to adapt, change and survive, in this case I suggest that we adopt new ways to deal with our mental health struggles, change our existing convictions on mental health practices or beliefs that are not productive and survive the endless troubles of the world with a more promising psychological orientation that will help us confront the future with less resentment, regret and unethical practices, that affect our society in humiliating ways.
