By Showunmi Sholanke Ezekiel
I would not have been surprised if the present Covid-19 tribulations have made us to forget some terrible events that assailed us just before the coronavirus, if not for the fact that it is part of Nigerian nature to mourn bitterly now and merrily party the very next minute. Terribly odd things happen so randomly rapidly that we quickly forget one entirely and move on to the next one, until the first one reoccurs, then we remember and ventilate again.
We have become just like the proverbial bird that eats hot peppers only. When it is time for it to pooh, and the pains become so much unbearable, the anus extremely hot, then the bird deeply regrets eating hot pepper. It will also make vows with curses never to eat anything pepper again. But when the its anus is relieved after the defecation, it quickly forgets the terrible experience and returns to pepper farm again to eat. This is just our nature as a nation.
But it is good to remind ourselves of the discovered endemic of illegal rehabilitation centres across Nigeria before the covid 19 pandemic brouhaha.
The discoveries of the illegal rehabilitation centres across Nigeria brought not too small countrywide outcry about what is called “man inhumanity to man”. Such horror scenes that can best be imagined in Noliwood villain movies are “proper” here in our neighbourhoods.
Sane men, women and children were discovered fettered with chains and violated in such shrines, a lot that the mentally sick persons are exported from neighbouring countries for psychiatric treatments in Nigeria. Well, this is a good development at least, people are coming in for health pilgrimage in our country, though in horror-movie-like rehabilitation centres.
Amazingly, we are all claiming ignorance of the existence of such shrines ab initio, even though it is well known and some of our relatives patronise them.
While we continue to wail and condemn such discoveries as heartless however, we need to diagnose and dissect what causes the flourishing of such shrines right before our nose: stigma and irritation against mental sickness.
Research has linked poor societal mindset with the behaviour of the mentally ill, rather than the cause of these mental illnesses. Thus, mentally unwell persons are frequently referred to as dangerous, suspicious, unstable, unreliable, irresponsible, and homicidal. These labels on their behaviour have aggravated stereotypes and provoked further prejudices on them.
I think it is good to school us a bit about the actual causes of mental illness.
It is far neither witchcrafts nor demons nor any metaphysical power that cause mental illness as you may have been made to believe, although such cannot be ruled out especially in a typical African setting. Rather, it is a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors. While some biological causes of the illness is genetic, certain infections, brain injury , some prenatal damage, substance abuse as well as poor nutrition and exposure to toxins can trigger mental illness in people. Psychological factors causing mental illness include severe psychological trauma suffered as a child, such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; loss of one’s parent at childhood, neglect as well as poor ability to relate to others.
Also some environmental variable such as certain stressors can trigger death or divorce, a dysfunctional family life, feelings of inadequacy, low self-esteem, anxiety, anger, or loneliness, changing jobs or schools, substance abuse by the person or the person’s parents and even a trivial matter such as social or cultural expectations where someone strives to conform to some societal demand such as struggle to get thinner because thinness is associated with beauty. All this is very much around us every day.
But anytime we see or hear about mentally ill somebody, we quickly conclude that supernatural forces have struck, or substance abuse boomerang, hence they can never be normal. Outrightly we discard them as unstable, toxic and dangerous people.
No. They are not dangerous and toxic. We are. Yet we continue to faux that we don’t have problem.
Although there’s no reliable statistics on the sickness in Nigeria, however in 2018, the Federal Ministry of Health through its Permanent Secretary, Abdulaziz Abdullahi confessed that about 20 to 30 per cent of Nigerians suffer from mental illness. This implies that Nigeria has about 60 million persons with mental illnesses. If the case is this prevalent, how many of the 60 million persons visit a standard psychiatric hospital across the nation? If the census is taken I bet they won’t be up to 500,000. If this is the truth why then are we adding salt to injuries by being hostile to the folks who go through the illness as though they’ve committed unpardonable crime?
Our mindset closer to the illness is within the gutter.
The hurricane of stigma can be too huge on anyone for that matter to weather through. All this deep-seated, long-held myths about mental illness is harming us as a people. It has also corroded the much cherished human feelings, and empathy associated with African communities. It has damaged our much esteemed village-like relationships where we look after each one’s welfare.
The Almajiri phenomenon has ended up being a moronic complex analysis without workable solutions. Child mortality rate is on the high side, after which comes the rampant drug abuse by women especially in the north. What solution did government locate? Confiscate the drugs and shutdown drug stores.
By the way, what makes us think that through seizing the drugs the difficulty can be addressed whilst there are different cheaper, locally formulated readily available methods of ‘getting high’? Our gutter is considered one of them. And then we randomly close down the exposed illegally ‘legal’ rehabilitation centres due to public outcry.
This is hypocrisy. By the way when did chopping off the head emerge as the remedy for headache?
We will continue to discover more and more of such rehabilitation bunker so long as we continue to stigmatise, isolate, condemn and input guilt on the unlucky ones among us that suffer the from the illness. If you are victim of mental illness, how will you have got people regard you? How will you have got people take you?
We should be clear about this as a fact, I can be a sufferer of the illness. You too can.
Mental illness is an illness and anyone can experience it. Whether you’re a banker, civil servant, politician journalist lawyer, doctor, lecturer, student, herbalist, cleric, fraudster, farmer, trader, pilot or whatever, everyone is a potential victim of mental sickness just as everyone is a potential victim of diarrhoea.
In some cases the victims are kept locked and chained up in the backyard in a lonely room for years, just to avoid the stigma that goes with it. We have lost our national mind on key issues, it appears.
Worst enough, there are not any mechanisms to defend mental patients’ rights. Why are we this cruel in opposition to the vulnerable in this country?
Someone just came up with anti hate speech bill with the ultimate solution for whoever is located culpable. And then, why the hate speech offenders face death penalty, the causers and provocateurs of the so called hate speech continue to tear apart our national institutions. Honourable Lawmaker, we’ve got an emergency, generational, institutionalised, crass hate in our national mental health faculty towards the mentally ill, could you please help codify that to law?
We must continue to let our leaders know that their actions and inactions have led many people in run mad psychiatrically. They annoyed destinies, crushed hopes, smashed dreams, violated public good and brought about national depression plague. Some of their ‘enduring’ legacies are shameful rehabilitation centres being discovered in troves across the nation. Our democracy seems to be contributing in no small to the sickness.
This certainly cannot be described a dividend of democracy.
Showunmi Sholanke Ezekiel can be reached on [email protected]
