MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2022: Make mental health & well-being for all a global priority

If I were to ask, “how are you doing today?’’ and you were to answer sincerely, would you respond with your typical answer - “I am fine”?
I bet you wouldn’t.

You’d probably need a couple of minutes to provide me with a comprehensive reply of how you really feel and in your response, you’d likely mention how unhappy you are with a particular part of your life. If I were to enquire further, we would probably spend at least an hour discussing how your childhood trauma (if you have any) and the resulting choices you made led to your current state of mental health.

While some individuals have people they can talk to about the things that bother them, there are those that don’t have access to the help they need.

Topics around mental health need to be discussed more and we should be more open to these issues as they affect our relationships with others, our physical health, and our daily lives.

That is why World Mental Health Day is set aside to increase public understanding of mental health and organise support for it.

The slogan for this year is ‘make mental health & well-being for all a global priority,’ and this day offers the opportunity for all those that work on mental health issues to share and discuss what else needs to be done to ensure that mental health care is available to everyone in the world.

In this blog post, we’ll be taking a look at how mental healthcare can be improved.

What can be done to make mental health a priority and improve mental health care availability:

1. Integrate mental health care with primary care

There is a general apathy towards regular health checkups by Nigerians to ascertain the state of their health when there is a lack of obvious signs of sickness and even when they are sick, they would first resort to self-care and medication. If such apathy is shown towards physical health, you can imagine that not much attention is given to mental health care. Those that do try to take care of their physical health almost always neglect their mental health.

To change this narrative and make mental health a priority, it needs to be made readily available at the point of meeting with primary healthcare physicians which is where patients interact with the healthcare system the most. In addition, doctors should encourage and recommend that their patients be further evaluated by psychiatrists as their mental health can affect their physical health negatively or positively. This form of collaborative care ensures better mental health for the populace.

2. More mental health experts and task shifting

Transferring the task of mental health care to physicians with training in mental health care could help to relieve psychiatrists in geographical areas that are burdened with mental health care cases.

Not having enough mental health experts could hinder this as there would be too many patients for psychiatrists to handle at a time. To increase the mental health workforce, more trained practitioners are required especially for locations that are likely to receive more mental health cases than others.

3. The use of alternative healthcare solutions

Using technology to aid healthcare is highly beneficial to patients as it removes the need to visit a hospital to access mental health care. For example, video calls can be used to have hospital visits and to check in with patients. This helps to solve the problem of uneven distribution of psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners. It also makes mental health care more accessible to those that would rather not visit a hospital solely for a mental health checkup.

The state of mental health in Nigeria is currently quite appalling and if measures aren’t taken to make mental health & well-being for all a national priority, the statistics as reported by the World Health Organisation (that Nigeria has the highest caseload of depression in Africa and is the fifteenth country with the highest frequency of suicide in the world) will only continue to worsen. The abysmally low number of mental health care professionals in the country also means that a large percentage of mentally ill individuals lack the care that they need.

Making mental health and well-being for all a national and global priority means prioritising Nigerians’ personal lives, relationships and physical health.

Would you like to help raise awareness for mental health day? Here are a few activities that you can do:

• Record a short clip stating why mental health care should be a priority and
• Repost mental health day-related content on social media.
• Check up on your friends to know how they are really doing.
  

Are you worried about your mental health and need help? Reach out to @mentallyawareng on Instagram to talk to a mental health professional today.

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