As Nigerians face dire economic challenges, a consultant Psychiatrist at the Federal Neuro Psychiatrist Hospital, Yaba, Dr Stephen Oluwaniyi has said that government and employers of labour must find ways of cushioning the effects of the current times on Nigerian employees.
In an exclusive interview with Good Health Weekly Oluwanyi spoke on steps to tackle mental health-related issues as well as what government and employers should do to guarantee the wellbeing of Nigerians and ameliorate the negative effects the harsh economy on the people’s mental health.
He maintained that employers should support their employees’ mental health.
“It’s not all about money but good conditions of work. People are being creative now with all these stresses that we are having. It is possible that you reduce the number of days they come to work without affecting your own productivity.
“What are the essentials and those things that are not important to you?
“You cut them off to make sure you help them to reduce the stress. Of course, if you can improve pay like some banks since the subsidy was removed, we heard improved the salaries of their workers that is also positive. That is good but that is not the only thing you can do.
“As much as money is good, organise healthcare lectures for your employees to make sure they are aware of what they need to do, how to take care of their mood, how to manage stress, and what to do when they start having symptoms. Organisations can do this employee-assisted programme.
“A programme where you pick early people with mental health symptoms and you provide support and opportunity to help them get back on their feet without the fear of losing their job that is what we need to do.”
He said another thing that employers and organisations can do is to improve their health insurance. It’s very important to look at our health insurance because many people are paying out of pocket.”
He insisted that the government should make sure spending on healthcare is improved especially with a focus on primary healthcare.
“It’s very important whatever government can do to make sure the trend of migration of healthcare workers is reversed. Most individuals with severe mental health conditions are depending on their relatives. They are depending on their parents. They depend on their co-workers to get the necessary help and healthcare.
“There should be robust health insurance that can take care of all this. Relatives don’t have to add that to their own burden of taking care of their loved ones. So these are some of the things that I think the government can also do to make sure we ameliorate the negative effects of this harsh condition on the mental health of Nigeria,” he added.
Speaking on impacts of economic hardship on patients, he said: “For those Nigerians who already have mental disorders, the implication of the current challenges in the country is that they will constitute perpetuating factors that will make it difficult for these individuals to recover adequately from their mental health condition.
“With the state of things, take the financial difficulties, for example, these are some of the implications that may worsen the mental health of the citizen.
“Now, there is a combination of adverse factors that we are experiencing. Today, we have economic, hardship, inflation, rising costs of goods and services, including health care itself and insecurity. Even the health care system is being negatively affected, especially from the point of view of the provision, as we have large, unprecedented, large numbers of healthcare workers emigrating from the country.”
He said the japa syndrome has further worsened the state of the fragile healthcare system, making it more inaccessible and inadequate.
“These are complicated series of adverse factors facing Nigerians, but, as the saying goes, tough times don’t last, tough people do.”
He said to address the problems; he recommended that Nigerians should learn to give a helping hand to one another. “Let’s not stress one another.
We should be like a team. We should be like a group. Let’s be like a family. That’s how we should be. Your mental health may or is most likely to be affected negatively knowing this is the starting point and then you move on to what you should do to protect yourself as an individual as far as the rising cost of living is concerned.
“We need to be creative. We need to set our priority rights. We need to know what should we even aspire for, people have different aspirations, and people have different things they want to do but we have to get our priority right when we are faced with this kind of situation.
“The first priority should be maintaining your health; everything you can do to make sure both your physical and mental health is taken care of. It is the first concern before now thinking of how to buy the latest clothes in town, aspiring to buy the new cars, all these things are good but you have to be healthy first for you to be able to enjoy them.
“A lot of time, stress comes from what you do to make sure that you are able to enjoy your life and that you are living the life that you want to live when people feel they are deprived.
“Let me use the example of an incident that happened recently a young woman that we read in the news committed suicide. She was working in a bank and then she decided to take her life in the office. She locked herself up in the toilet, according to what we heard and took an insecticide. She left a suicide note stating that ‘things are hard financially she couldn’t continue’, she felt like there was no way out and then apologise to his loved ones who most likely she must have been supporting.
For this individual, it is so unfortunate, the issue in that situation is that she is no more, the question is now; those loved ones, those young ones that she desperately wants to help are they a lot better off now that she’s no more?
“After all, the bank was paying her, no matter how little she was taking something. But now that she has taken her own life, are the lots of her loved ones a lot better?
How will you appraise a situation that determines your mood? Individuals should know that of course. There’s no doubt that the young lady must have become depressed.
But people don’t also become depressed overnight even though we know a combination of factors – genetics and psychosocial stressors are usually responsible. But when you don’t look at your situation and you are appraising negatively you choose to look at a difficult situation and not at the positive. Still using the example of this young lady, there are many other people who don’t even have jobs. She had one from the responses that we read online that she was also having outside businesses and that she was very industrious. So appraise your situation, and learn to be grateful in the midst of it all, that’s at least your life. You are able to even buy a car, you are able to walk, and you are able to walk around.
So the first thing is for individuals to learn to appraise their situation positively and be grateful for what they have and then set their priorities right. Instead of aspiring for millions, appreciate the little you have, use it to take care of your health get information about your health and be creative on what you can do to improve your income and then manage the one you have. If you sit down you are thinking and feeling sad, sorry for yourself it will only worsen your mental state.”
He said once a person was depressed, the individual will not even work. He listed some of the symptoms of depression to include; when individuals are not able to sleep, they are becoming persistently sad or no longer enjoying what they used to enjoy, and becoming irritable. “These are signals of early symptoms of problems that they need to quickly talk to an expert, talk to their healthcare providers to make sure they get the needed help quickly.”
Speaking further, the Oluwaniyi, lamented that healthcare in Nigeria is not adequately available, not accessible and affordable.
He said the state of Nigeria’s primary health care is not where it is supposed to be which is also part of the reasons why health care is not adequately available and accessible.
He insisted that currently, the state of health care in Nigeria cannot adequately take care of the health care needs of the citizens.
Lamenting the prevalence and the burden of various disorders in the country, he said: “Before now, the prevalence of mental disorders in the country was about 20 per cent which means one in every five Nigerians will come down with a mental health condition and this is, especially if we compare it with the availability of care in the country, we see that the burden of the prevalence is very high. But if what we have seen in our hospitals is anything to go by, the prevalence is increasing, at least in the last two years”.