IN TODAY’S VIEWPOINT, PENSIONERS FM TAKES A LOOK AT TACKLING NIGERIA’S MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS
They are called Omo Ijoba in local parlance.
It is an innuendo for the mentally challenged, and they are numerous on the nation’s roads and highways.
For instance, in Ibadan, Oyo state, almost at every corner, from Dugbe to Mokola, Sango to Oojo, challenge, ring road, they are not wanting.
Other parts of Ibadan and towns in Oyo state have their presence in motley rags and other paraphrenia depicting their mental state.
Other places that host them are market places where some of them find solace when sleep comes calling in the night.
Abandoned by families or relatives who might have been weighed down by the burden of caring for them, or distressed by the stigma they constitute, these victims of circumstances roam roads and streets.
Statistics shows that forty to sixty Million Nigerians suffer from one form of mental illness or another, with less than 10 percent having access to medical services.
many chronic mentally challenged cases are functions of unwise vices such as hard drugs and alcohol addiction.
Whatever the cause of their discomfort, casualties of mental disorder constitute a threat to themselves and the larger society.
They are vulnerable to diseases as they feed on whatever they come across, even leftovers on refuse dumps or road medians.
Some have festering sores on their bodies with no hope in sight of receiving treatment as they are social outcasts.
Moreover, some mentally challenged persons are dangerous emissaries of death stalking the streets.
Records indicate that there are eight federal neuropsychiatric hospitals in Nigeria, located in Edo, Enugu, Kaduna, Lagos. Ogun, Sokoto, Borno and cross river states.
Besides, some states including Anambra, rivers run neuropsychiatric hospitals.
However, these are obviously grossly insufficient for the number of mental illness cases in the country.
Besides, there goes with it the challenges of inadequate personnel, equipment and high cost of drugs.
Nigeria with its over two hundred million population, requires at least about two thousand neurosurgeons, however, current figure is less than two hundred.
Government should increase funds allocated to mental issues in the budgetary allocation to health sector.
Particularly, concerted efforts should be made to make mental health drugs affordable by subsidising them.
Also, government should undertake public sensitisation programme on care for those suffering mental disorder.
National drug law enforcement agency, NDLEA, along other relevant security outfits should go after hard drugs peddlers, couriers and users, by raiding joints and outlets where cannabis, Colorado, Skushi and the likes are sold.
Advocacy against illicit drug use should be intensified among youths, in secondary schools, tertiary institutions, motor parks, markets and other public spaces.
Families and relatives should not allow the trauma of caring for mentally challenged to weigh them down to the point of neglecting them, but rather take them to available neurological centres.
That was viewpoint on tackling Nigeria’s mental health crisis
