64 Million Nigerians Suffer From Mental Illness

The Founder of the Mental Health Foundation, Emmanuel Owoyemi, revealed on Thursday that 64 million Nigerians had one form of mental illness or the other. The expert advocated for quick passage of the Mental Health bill by the National Assembly.

Mr. Owoyemi, who disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos, on the sideline of a forum to mark the 2013 World Mental Health Day, put a blame on the absence of a mental health policy in the country.

"64 million Nigerians today are going through one form of mental illness or the other because everything that would cause mental illness is on the increase in Nigeria.

Among factors causing mental illnesses and being on the increase he mentioned poverty, hopelesneess, insecurity, panic at heart, anxiety, high level of depression. According to his words, another reason is absence of mental health policy in the country at the moment as the National Assembly has been delaying passing the Mental Health Bill.

"We have about 150 psychiatrists; we have 34 neuro-surgeons in the whole country, meaning that, one point something million Nigerians is to one psychiatrist.

"How many people can one psychiatrist attend to within the 1.2 million or 1.3 million?

The experts states that not enough is being done.

Mr. Owoyemi urged the National Assembly to ensure the speedy passage of the Mental Health Bill to reduce high rate of mental cases.

"We need a Mental Health Bill, a national policy for mental health; that is where to start from.

In his opinion, there must be legal framework that will help to do everything required to improve the situation. And that legal framework is a bill, which is not passed yet.

"If we say, let's start putting facilities, structures, systems in place, it is the bill that will give us the legal framework to do all that. "So, if the bill is not passed nothing else can be done, even to budget for mental health adequately, we need a bill that guides everything we do," he said.