Mental Health Stigma: How Society Can Support Mental Well-being
One of the things I have really come to discover in Nigeria is that whenever the topic of mental health is been raised up, it is always treated with this less importance and even though there have been effort to create massive awareness about it, I have come to discover that mental health stigma is still thriving and still becoming the order of the day. I have seen people personally who have suffered from different mental health conditions and most of the time, our society is quick to paint them as been weak or under spiritual attack.
This constant stigma have even lead a lot of people to depression which made them to take their life's at the end of the day. I have come to discover that to deal with this issue, the society must collectively come to the understanding of supporting the mental health wellbeing of individuals. When I was actually trying to understand the root causes of Mental Health Stigma In Nigeria as many people think it is attributed to spiritual factors like witchcraft, demonic possession or generational curses. Well probably those things exist but I didn't really believe these are the root cause of mental health stigma.
People like I said earlier who suffer from these mental illnesses are always tagged to be weak in their communities or even in their families. The stigma has successfully affected negatively those people and the unfortunate thing is the society is still silent about these stigma issues while a lot of individuals are suffering underground due to their mental health challenges.
According to the research I carried out, I discovered that one out of four people in Nigeria suffer from mental disorders. I guess you might be shocked right? I was also shocked. If these rate is not treated, I guess the figure will get worse over time and this might lead to increased in the rate of suicide in the society we live in.
One of the ways I believe society can change the narrative is making use of the tools we have on ground already majoring education. These factors can help to break the barriers that will increase the awareness and make individuals to be free to seek help when they knew they need to find one. Well even though education can play a significant part but it can't do all. I believe there is a massive role our community and religious leader can do in this situation.
In Nigeria, religious leaders have significant influence over their followers and so if those leaders are properly educated and enlighten about mental health, I believe they can really become a major tool to help fight against those stigma. First of all, I believe our religious leader can establish the fact that health conditions is not a spiritual cause as it looks like that has been the picture painted in our society. Community leaders in their own case I believe can create mediums, space that can make people discuss their mental health struggles and with that they can successfully get the help they need instead of dying secretly.
One other way I believe the society can come in play to help change the narrative is to help promote professional mental health services. The truth is most of the part of Nigeria, they lack mental health professionals who can help attend to individuals suffering from mental illness. We can make available psychologists I mean trained and skilled ones. Not only that, mental health centers should be well equipped with the necessary facilities and equipment that can help attend to the needs of those people suffering from those conditions.
There can also be mental health policies that can be established in various workplace. Policies like having access to counseling services across workplace in our society, we can even have mental health days and more programs that helps to create massive awareness about mental health. By doing so, it will not only help the employees in the workplace but also helps at the end of the day to increase productivity at the working place.
The last one I will like to talk about before I finally conclude is there should encouragement for personal responsibility. Even though the society can offer their own support, I still believe every individuals have a role to play to pay attention to their own mental well-being. People should be enlighten to see the need to give priority to their mental health. Not only that, individuals should understand that seeking for help if you are suffering from mental health conditions does not mean you are weak, it means you are strong enough to speak out. Instead of dieing secretly, open up to your friends, families and even if it will warrant seeking medical support at the early stage is crucial.
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Awareness is a good tool to help battle stigmatization, it is even better now than before, and we hope for more awareness of the issue.
Mental health is an appropriate topic to talk about as we have a lot of people dying in silence everyday.