Mental health: Total balance of the body, soul and spirit

When mention is made of psychiatric hospitals such as Yaba Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos, popularly called ‘Yaba Left’ because of the tag put on mental sickness, one thinks of places where wild, crazy people are housed. Mental health is not limited to cases of people that suffer delusion and have absolute disregard for basic personal hygiene. […]

When mention is made of psychiatric hospitals such as Yaba Psychiatric Hospital, Lagos, popularly called ‘Yaba Left’ because of the tag put on mental sickness, one thinks of places where wild, crazy people are housed. Mental health is not limited to cases of people that suffer delusion and have absolute disregard for basic personal hygiene. In the same vein, psychiatry transcends tranquilising rabid individuals. We must remove ourselves from such narrow-mindedness and thus lift the stigma that is attached to having some form of mental issue or the other.
 Mental health refers to the state of one’s mind, be it happy, sad, stable or unstable. It encompasses people’s cognitive and emotional well being, that is how we think, feel and behave.
 Mental health, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), can be defined as the total balance of an individual with his person, body system and environment. The state of good mental health is attained when one is free from mental illness, which include mental depression, mental disorder, psychosis, neurosis, madness and even excessive expression of anger.
 Mental health is therefore not synonymous with mental illness or disorder as portrayed by the anomalies highlighted. Mental disorders come about as a result of a breakdown in the balance in a person’s body systems or his environment, both human and material.
Mental disorder is one of such mental maladies that is overlooked or trivialised by members of our society today, which are characterised by abnormalities in a person’s emotion, cognition, sensory perceptions, beliefs and behaviour.
Depression can be said to refer to a constant feeling of sadness and despair. It is also characterised by loss of energy and pleasure in things or activities that once gave joy.
 In a society where we are taught to go on with our daily activities, regardless of how we feel, it is understandable that we each come up with our own defence mechanisms, just to get through each day. An individual who cannot get on with the programme will be seen as a break in the system – a failure of some sorts. But what we forget is that we cannot all be the same. We do not all have the same strengths; neither do we have the same weaknesses. Also, life does not throw us all the same situations and circumstances. We need an understanding of these facts.
 The case of the 400-Level Law student of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) who committed suicide earlier this year, allegedly because his girlfriend broke up with him (although this was later debunked), is a sign that it doesn’t take much to break people down. There were reports that he made his intentions known to close friends, but apparently, none could provide the support needed. This shows how ill equipped most of us are as support systems to people who really need us.
 Humour, ridicule or outright ignoring of expressed emotions is not a good way of getting individuals to ‘toughen up’ and get through their trials. Perhaps, if this student had a non-judgemental listening ear, things would have turned out different.
 There was also the case of a good neighbour who usually becomes ‘philanthropic’ whenever she was pregnant. She had a provision store and usually gave away her goods whenever she was expecting a baby. It took her second pregnancy for the family to realise there was a problem before they sought help.
There was yet another one who was not receptive to her new born baby; she neither wanted to carry nor breastfeed the baby. It took the eagle eye of an expert to recognise it as depression and provided the required support before it was too late.
Statistics, according to the Federal Ministry of Health, have shown that mental and neurological disorders constitute 12.5 per cent of all diseases globally; mental disorder occurs in 20-30 per cent of the general population and higher among general clinic attendants; the common disorder include major depression: 3 per cent prevalence in the population; schizophrenia: 1 per cent prevalence in the population; epilepsy: 0.5 per cent prevalence in the population; children mental health problems: 3 per cent of those aged 0-9 years.
Nigerians are said to be the happiest people on earth, but are we really? Yes, we laugh a lot and make jokes of the gravest incidents, but does that truly connote happiness? If we are so happy, why then are our city centres full of grumpy or aggressive drivers? Why have our youths in tertiary institutions taken up drug use? These, amongst other things, are signs that all is generally not well with the average Nigerian. The fact that we can endure the many ills of our society and still come out smiling does not mean we are happy. It means we are a strong people who believe the worst should not get us down. A smile can hide a thousand hurts tearing someone up inside. With the rise in unemployment, high cost of living in most cities, and lack of basic social amenities, not to mention the Boko Haram insurgency, it should not be a thing of shame to admit that you cannot handle it all on your own.
The Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN) enumerated that a good mental health involves maintaining a balance between work/studies and leisure, ensuring healthy lifestyles comprising of less or no alcohol/cigarette, ensuring good ante and post-natal cares, immunising children against communicable diseases, learning to relax with adequate sleep, learning to avoid/reduce undue frictions at home, work and community with spouses, friends, bosses, colleagues and all; having a positive attitude to life, even against all odds. According to them, mental illness are believed to be caused by drug abuse, stress of modern living, loss of family ties and support, especially in the urban areas, poverty, unemployment, over-crowding and rapid social changes. They advised that promoting good health lies in taking preventive measures against mental illness. This, according to them, can be achieved through educating the populace on the psycho-social causes of mental illness and disabusing their minds on the preternatural and supernatural causes; providing information on the consequences of mental illness; promoting good family living, which enhances family tie and support; providing drug abuse counselling services; teaching skills that will enhance adjustment to rapid social changes; providing employment opportunities and retirement counselling; alleviating poverty and working towards its total eradication; teaching skills in stress management to the populace, especially the vulnerable group; providing well equipped counselling clinics for stress management and trained counsellors to provide the therapy; creating awareness on the importance and gains of good mental health through posters, drama, symposia, radio/television jingles, essay competitions among students and adolescents, lectures and poetry competitions.
 Tola Agunbiade is a Mass Communication Student of the University of Ilorin [email protected]