Mental health: Nigeria in a silent emergency – Experts

…Say nationalist effect to termination weak

By Sola Ogundipe & Chioma Obinna

As the curtains lifted yesterday astatine the 3rd Vanguard Mental Health Summit astatine the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos, the aerial was dense with urgency – a telephone for Nigeria to face what experts described arsenic a soundless nationalist emergency.

Amid passionate appeals for argumentation reform, termination prevention, and nationalist awareness, an array of stakeholders, from psychiatrists and survivors to ineligible scholars, journalists, and younker advocates, gathered to spotlight the country’s deepening termination situation and its increasing nexus with substance abuse.

Held nether the taxable “Taming the Tide of Suicide successful Nigeria” and the sub-theme “Substance and Silence: Unmasking the Dual Crisis of Addiction and Suicide,” the Summit was not conscionable a gathering of minds, but a outcry from the heart. Speakers pushed for Nigeria to state termination a nationalist crisis, urging a displacement from the colonial-era signifier of criminalising attempted termination to a health-centred, compassionate exemplary of prevention.

While experts dissected policies and lawmakers debated reform, the existent value of the situation was not recovered successful statistic oregon legislation, it was embodied successful the quiescent communicative of a young antheral sitting successful the backmost enactment of the hall.

Simply introducing himself arsenic ‘M’, helium had travel determination by chance, oregon fate. For weeks, helium had battled an unseen warfare wrong himself. He sat unsocial successful his country astir nights, telephone switched off, his thorax choky with despair. The voices successful his caput whispered that the satellite would beryllium amended disconnected without him. M wanted to scope retired to family, friends, anyone but fearfulness of judgement kept him silent.

When helium yet tried, the effect was indifference.

So, soundlessness became his companion, a soundlessness truthful heavy it astir swallowed him whole. It was that aforesaid soundlessness that the Vanguard Mental Health Summit sought to shatter.

Inside the Civic Centre’s packed hall, discussions moved beyond rhetoric. Experts warned that much Nigerians are dying from preventable despair than from roadworthy crashes oregon HIV-related illnesses. The Suicide Decriminalisation Bill, present earlier the National Assembly, became a cardinal talking constituent arsenic speakers urged lawmakers to walk it swiftly.

Criminalising an effort astatine suicide, they argued, punishes symptom alternatively of treating it. The gathering echoed a azygous connection — termination is preventable, but Nigeria’s nationalist effect remains dangerously weak.

But for the young antheral sitting softly successful the crowd, the time marked thing much profound than policy. It marked the archetypal clip idiosyncratic listened.

A fortnight earlier, M sat unsocial successful his room, telephone off, the value pressing dense crossed his chest. The voices successful his caput whispered that the satellite would beryllium amended disconnected without him.

But determination was nary 1 helium felt harmless turning to. Not his parents, not his friends, not adjacent doctors helium feared would justice him. When helium yet tried to scope out, the effect was soundlessness – a soundlessness truthful heavy it astir swallowed him whole.

M lived connected the borderline of despair. He had mislaid involvement successful life, felt invisible successful his pain, and had begun searching online for however to extremity his beingness quietly.

Alone successful his room, helium scrolled done the internet, looking for answers oregon an escape, but what helium recovered alternatively was anticipation — a nexus to the 3rd Vanguard Mental Health Summit Programme.

“I was browsing the net connected however to instrumentality my beingness erstwhile I stumbled connected the Vanguard Mental Health Summit, that is what has saved maine today,” M said, his dependable trembling.

When helium walked into the hallway wherever the Vanguard Mental Health acme held, helium was a antheral connected the brink, but erstwhile helium stood up to speak, helium became the surviving embodiment of this year’s taxable – “Taming the Tide of Suicide successful Nigeria.” That was the infinitesimal soundlessness became loud.

Crying down the smile

M’s communicative is not an isolated one. It mirrored the soundless epidemic spreading crossed Nigeria — an epidemic of symptom without voice, despair without language, and loneliness ...