Okenyi Kenechi
World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on October 10. It is aimed at raising awareness and spreading education about mental health issues across the globe.
People with mental health conditions are at a higher risk of dying prematurely. Depression, one of the commonest mental health illnesses is one of the leading causes of disability while suicide is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-old, according to the World Health Organization.
For this year’s celebration, Obiageli Osugo, the founder of Love and Life International; a mental health initiative, tells us the struggle of those suffering from mental health disorders in Nigeria.
Excerpts …
TPCN: The concept of mental health, what does it entail?
Osugo: The concept of Mental health in itself is very broad. It’s any condition that has to do with one’s state of mind at any given time. We try to educate people and let them know that their physical health is as important as their mental health.
So, when we say the concept of mental health condition, it’s not wrapped in one topic, however, it varies from individual to individual. We’re all born with good mental health; it is now our experiences in life depending on how traumatic, depending on how stressful it is, are the factors that affect mental health.
We also have the aspect of the Genes, the hereditary mental health conditions. When you look at your family tree, you see that there are some conditions like depression that run in the person’s family.
It actually depends on what aspect or angle it is affecting the individual in particular. So, it’s not something that we can narrow down to a particular thing.
TPCN: Are most of the disorders physically observable or diagnosed?
Osugo: Well, yes, there are some mental health illnesses that are physically observable but sometimes it depends on your knowledge about mental health; because, for instance, a person who is suffering from severe anxiety, you may see these symptoms and mistake them to be something else.
In fact, one of the major challenges is the fact that people display physical mental illnesses in Nigeria and the first thing we think of is taking them to the church. So, now, it’s not like we have anything against the church, it’s actually a good thing to pray for your loved ones when they are ill; but, you need to be sure that the attention they’re are getting is exactly what they need for the condition or situation they are in.
For instance, let me use OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) for example. So, you see people do this repetitive action, they have this high instinct. They observe their surroundings, hyper-vigilant. So, for instance, something that you and I might not observe on a regular as a normal thing is something that they will pay attention to. They pay attention to the smallest details. They do the same thing over and over; they can clean a particular spot a hundred times in five minutes.
So, they’re so many signs and symptoms that you can see. For instance, they’re even some personality disorders that give people the confidence to do things that we mistake for being confident, intelligent. You know, we laugh about these things that people do, and some of these people eventually rise through the ladder with these behaviours that we term abnormal for other people and we attribute it to confidence, but they are actually mental health conditions that these people are displaying. So, it requires proper diagnosis, because in some cases, it might not be a mental ailment, it might just be poor coping skills. It might just be that people have poor coping skills when it comes to stress.
Like some people just shut down. They cannot attend to anything, they are emotionally distraught when they are under stress or pressure. It might not necessarily be a mental illness, so, most times, they require a proper diagnosis from a therapist, a psychologist or a psychiatrist to ascertain what exactly is going on.
TPCN: Your organization is into sensitization, outreach and mobilization for victims of mental health disorders. What are your success stories so far?
Osugo: Love and Life is my brainchild, it was founded on the 28 of July 2018. It’s made up of a team of 6 people, with more females. We have 3 physiologists. We have a duty expert and a hospitality expert.
It is a combination of people from different fields, who are passionate about mental health. Like we all know, we have faced the challenges most NGOs face in Nigeria, which is, one, trying to create awareness in a field a lot of people do not even have an idea about; they are ignorant, which is mental health.
The NGO was born out of my own personal experience with postpartum depression, which is a mental health condition that affects moms with newborns and all that. So, we are still trying to cut our teeth in the area of mental health, although we’ve done one or two events. We’ve done a few outreach programs here and there. We have also celebrated our two years anniversary. We also understand that sometimes people are, there’s a lot of poverty in Nigeria, so, as a way of helping people have good mental health, we reach out to widows. In our organization, we have an all-female Facebook group that we run, where we randomly select female members who are widows, single moms, young upcoming female entrepreneurs and we support them to the best of our ability. So, that’s where we are currently.
We still have the challenge of funding; as you know, most people don’t respond to calls for support when it comes to NGOs in Nigeria. It’s not something that we are used to in this part of the world; so we are struggling, trying to break into the society, get the attention of the government in terms of funding and partnership to create more awareness in our quest to shine the light on mental health conditions.
TPCN: Postpartum depression and Nigeria’s dilapidated health care system. How easy is it for victims to seek help?
Osugo: I tell you, it is just recently that women can even relate to what was happening to them. I started researching as I had postpartum depression in my first pregnancy, which was 12 years ago and I didn’t even know what was wrong with me. It was in my second pregnancy that I discovered the name of what was wrong with me.
So, I had the physical symptoms of irritability, withdrawal, sudden emotional outburst, isolation, difficulty bonding with my baby and all that. I had all those symptoms but I could not understand what was wrong with me. I tried to talk to my medical team, they were not of much help. I tried to talk to my spiritual directors, they didn’t even have a clue of what was happening to me and all that.
So, the physical symptoms are there but the challenge is getting the help that the women need. For instance, the fear of stigma alone does not even allow women to talk about how they are feeling. So, a woman is not feeling any emotions for her baby, but she cannot say it out so that there won’t be any backlash. So, that people don’t descend on her or take her to church for deliverance or they say she’s irresponsible and can’t wait to be jumping around with her friends.
