A call has gone to the federal government of Nigeria to expedite action on the recent statistics by mental health experts where about 50 million Nigerians are said to be mentally ill.
The reaction was against the backdrop of recent revelation by a mental health expert who raised the alarm via a publication.
While speaking with Blueprint in an exclusive chat in Abuja on Tuesday, a Physiotherapist, Dr Itopa Yahya Garba, allayed fears, saying: “While not dismissing the claims as expressed by experts, I will nevertheless add here that not all mental disorder is that severe.”
Itopa gave the hint at a symposium held for the staff of the Federal Ministry of Justice in Abuja in commemoration of the World Mental Health Day.
According to him, there is a lot of plausibility in those statistics, saying some mental disorders are mild and may never require clinical attention.
Although Itopa who was a guest speaker at the event added: “By the time you aggregate all of this, you find out that yes indeed a lot of people out there might actually be having mental health disorder.”
Itopa identified socio-economic circumstances, stress, insecurity and other happenings in the society as capable of precipitating or perpetuates mental illness in individuals.
On the way out, Itopa charged the federal government to pass into law the mental health Act, saying it captures all the challenges, adequate funding like they did HIV and the Covid-19 scourge.
