MENTAL DISORDER AND THE SOCIETY

There is no discrimination when it comes to who suffers from mental illness, but in Nigeria discrimination against sufferers is still rife, and mental health issues often come last on the list for policy makers.

Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Serious mental illnesses include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and borderline personality disorder. (NAMI)

Although the exact cause is not easy to define as the term mental health covers a broad complex spectrum, it is becoming clear through research that many of these conditions are caused by a combination of biological, psychological and environmental factors.
What else is clear is that people living with mental illness in Nigeria need support to enable them cope in society.

Thousands if not millions of people in Nigeria suffer from untreated mental health disorders that could have been helped if resources were distributed differently.

The stigma attached to any mental disorder remains a serious problem, which makes it difficult to re integrate sufferers back into society and many cases of human rights violations occurring like chaining or beatings and some times even death.
Most Africans adhere in varying degrees to the belief in supernatural causation thus sufferers are taken to traditional spiritualist or witch doctors in the pursuit of some sort of exorcism of the illness. This is a major challenge as a lot of these traditional healers are opposed to orthodox medications therefore constitute an obstacle .

Whats more baffling is Nigeria is signatory to both the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its Optional Protocol.
The CRPD was the first international, legally binding human rights treaty targeted at protecting the human rights of people with disabilities.  A few examples of the human rights that the CRPD protects include, but are not limited to:

• The right to be protected from abuse, violence, and torture
• The right to live in the community, with one's family, without being institutionalized against one's will
• The right to employment and a decent standard of living
• The right to access social justice

World Health Organisation (WHO) Constitution says - The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without the distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.
 
So, the current state of affairs is a massive indictment on the nations health service and the government itself. Whilst most of the world has evolved, enacted or revised legislation to protect and serve the mentally vulnerable. Outdated archaic colonial law still governs mental health in Nigeria.

Policy makers need to realise the cost benefit ratio of treating people with mental illnesses and making them active members in national economic activities.

We need to end the stigma associated with mental illness! It will take some extraordinary men and women to change the mindset and the current  psychiatric system inside out.

Picture The Rumuigbo Mental Hospital in Port Harcourt, Nigeria is less a medical facility and more like a jail. With only pennies a day going to medication and counseling, the prospects of patients leaving any better than they arrived are doubtful.