Over 60m Nigerians Have Mental Disorder’

 

Over 60m Nigerians Have Mental Disorder’

The Ogun State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Babatunde Ipaye, has said that over 60 million Nigerians have various degrees of mental disorder.

He told newsmen in Abeokuta, the state capital, that about 80 per cent of people move about with metal disorder without knowing or seeking for help, while 20-25 per cent live with a full blown mental disorder in the country.

He said cases of mental challenges range from simple minor mood disorder to extreme cases of mental accreditation, adding that one out of every five Nigerians have an extreme mental disorder.

The commissioner said event that could trigger minor mood disorder that could finally lead to extreme mental illness are marital pressure, educational and economic pressure.

Ipaye said other pressures are expectation and disappointment, advocating that community mental home should be created across the country to socially manage mental disorder at the grassroots level.

While urging the federal government to prioritise primary health care intervention for minor mood disorder, the commissioner said people should always go for regular psychotherapy check-up with no cost implication to manage cases of mental challenges before they get out of hand.

Mental health experts had recently raised an alarm over increased cases of mental disorder in the domestic economy and have called for adequate facilities and personnel to curb it.

They said mental disorder, also called mental illness, psychological disorder, or psychiatric disorder, is mental or behavioural pattern that causes either suffering or poor ability to function in ordinary life.

They reiterated that causes of mental disorder are often unclear but common causes include drug abuse, depression, dementia, schizophrenia, as well as stigma and discrimination.

The mental health experts who expressed their views in separate interviews in an agency report said about one in four Nigerians have one form of mental disorder or the other.

The report quoted Professor Oye Guruje, a psychiatrist with University of Ibadan, as sayng that government should give priority attention to the management of mental disorder because its burden outweighed that of HIV.

He said “mental illness is one of the major contributors to disease burden globally; it is the sixth largest burden worldwide and this is much more burdensome than HIV.

“In Nigeria, one out of seven persons will have serious mental illnesses, while one in four persons will have some form of mental disorder; and this is a conservative estimate,” he said.

Mr. Guruje, who said that mental illnesses could be treated with the right care, noted that “every mental disorder has some form of treatment; but whether the person will fully recover depends on the type of illness.