Group Marks World Mental Health Day With Awareness Campaign

As portion of activities marking this year’s World Mental Health Day, the Safe Spaces Campaign nether the Health Situations level held a intelligence wellness consciousness lawsuit successful Abuja themed “Drugs and Our Mental Health.”

The event, which featured a sheet session, schoolhouse outreach and originative advocacy displays, aimed to rise consciousness connected the intersection betwixt substance usage and intelligence well-being, portion encouraging therapy and steadfast coping mechanisms among young people.

The convener of the Safe Spaces Campaign and laminitis of Health Situations, Ngozi Ibe, said the inaugural was designed to beforehand unfastened conversations astir intelligence wellness successful schools and communities, portion providing young radical with alternate outlets to stress, trauma, and adjacent pressure.

“This year’s run focused connected helping young radical recognize that therapy is not a weakness but a pathway to healing,” Ibe said. “We besides launched our ‘Drop Your Drug, Take Up Therapy’ thrust successful concern with NDLEA to enactment sobriety without shame.”

In his opening remark, Mr. Azubuike Ishiekwene, Senior Vice Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Leadership Newspapers, underscored the increasing value of intelligence wellness arsenic a important portion of modern living. He commended the inaugural for spotlighting an overlooked contented and encouraged much media and institutions to usage their platforms to normalize intelligence wellness conversations.

“Mental wellness is not a luxury, it is simply a necessity for endurance successful today’s world,” Ishiekwene stated. “What initiatives similar Safe Spaces are doing is gathering resilience successful a procreation that indispensable larn to cope, communicate, and attraction for themselves.”

Also speaking astatine the event, Mr. Femi Babafemi, Director of Media and Advocacy astatine the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), represented by Francis Okogun, reiterated the agency’s committedness to supporting school-based sensitization programmes and consciousness campaigns to trim cause usage among young people.

Okogun noted that partnerships similar Safe Spaces complement NDLEA’s ongoing schoolhouse drives and younker outreach efforts aimed astatine prevention alternatively than punishment. He emphasised that aboriginal involution and accordant consciousness were captious successful gathering a drug-free generation.

One of the astir moving moments of the lawsuit came from Abdumalik Yahya, a talker who shared his idiosyncratic travel from cause addiction to sobriety. In his affectional testimony, Yahya recounted his struggles and recovery, urging young radical to question healthier coping mechanisms erstwhile faced with life’s challenges.

“I thought drugs would assistance maine flight my pain,” helium said, “but they lone deepened it. What genuinely healed maine was uncovering community, therapy, and purpose. That’s what Safe Spaces is offering today.”

The lawsuit drew intelligence wellness professionals, educators, students, and advocates, who participated successful discussions connected affectional management, stigma reduction, and therapy awareness. Poetry performances, open-mic reflections, and originative exhibitions added extent to the campaign’s message.

Ngozi Ibe further announced that the Safe Spaces Club volition soon beryllium established successful secondary schools to prolong the speech beyond the yearly campaign. The nine volition clasp play sessions incorporating therapy-inspired learning, affectional intelligence, and peer-support discussions, alongside originative and life-skill activities.

“Our extremity is to marque intelligence wellness acquisition a portion of schoolhouse culture,” she said. “We privation students to person harmless environments wherever they tin talk, larn coping tools, and get assistance early.”

The Safe Spaces initiative, which has antecedently collaborated with NDLEA X Spaces and different partners, continues to presumption itself arsenic a starring youth-driven level for intelligence wellness advocacy, fostering inclusive and stigma-free spaces for young Nigerians to thrive.