A professor of psychiatry, Taiwo Sheikh, has urged Nigerians to cultivate the habit of caring for their mental health through regular check-ups and treatment.
Sheikh, also the immediate past President of the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN), gave the advice in an interview with our correspondent on Wednesday in Lagos.
According to him, 90 per cent of Nigerians with mental disorders do not visit healthcare providers for attention and care.
He said that such an attitude had detrimental effects on the individual and society at large.
Sheikh said that stigmatisation, poor recognition and less attention given to mental health in society were factors responsible for such attitude.
He said: “90 per cent of people who have mental disorders in our country, whether major or minor, do not get to see any psychiatric healthcare provider at all for relief of their symptoms.”
“So, they are not diagnosed or treated; which is a shame, because they have a detrimental effect, not just on the individuals, but also on our society.”
“Most people who have mental illnesses carry them about; it is like they are working wounded. So, they go to work and live their lives with it.”
“They might not be disturbing other people, but they are under-performing at their tasks or they are making wrong decisions as a result of the illness. So, untreated mental illness, whether major or minor, carries a cost both for the individual and society.”
Sheikh also said that one in every five persons would at one point in their lifetime experience one type of mental illness or the other.
He said that most of the mental illnesses experienced by people were not psychotic such as hallucinations, schizophrenia, but were as a result anxiety, stress and depression.
“Those constitute the overwhelming majority of mental illnesses. They are very common and often missed because people do not even recognise them as mental illnesses, and they do not present themselves to healthcare providers.”
“They do not present, sometimes, out of ignorance or just because the facilities for intervention are not available or not within their easy reach,” he said.
He said that there were approximately 200 psychiatrists in Nigeria due to the brain drain which had continued to be a challenge in the country.
Sheikh who decried the poor state of the few existing psychiatric hospitals in the country, said that most states in the country did not have functional psychiatric hospitals.
“Aside from that mental health facilities are not readily equipped and available across the country. Many Nigerian psychiatrists practised abroad because conditions of work in many Western countries are obviously more attractive than locally.”
“Also, many young doctors prefer to specialise in areas they consider more ‘lucrative’ such as obstetrics and gynaecology rather than psychiatry.”
“There is a need to properly equip mental health facilities and provide incentives that would attract more young doctors to show interest in psychiatry as a career in Nigeria,” he said.
Sheikh said that Nigeria should explore ways to creatively provide mental health services to a substantial number of people to curb the challenge posed in the provision of mental healthcare and maintenance of mental health.
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