Err..21 million Nigerians have psychiatric disorder, says CMD

             

We have few neuropsychiatric hospitals in Nigeria considering the large number of people who need psychiatric help in this country, this is not funny, the federal government need to build more hospitals to meet the growing need for psychiatric care.

The Medical Director, Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital (FNH),Yaba, Lagos, Dr. Rahman Lawal in this interview with Martins Ifijeh of This Day News, talked about the need for state governments to set up neuropsychiatric hospitals in their various states, among other related issues.

It is an interesting read

See excerpt:

Inadequacies of Neuropsychiatric hospitals in the country

On the federal government’s part, I will say they have done a lot. We were previously having three neuropsychiatric hospitals in Nigeria, but today we have eight. I think going by our population, it’s now up to the state governments to set up neuropsychiatric hospitals in their various states. I know some of these states have, but they are very few. If every state set up neuropsychiatric hospitals then the burden of patients not able to access treatment promptly will reduce drastically.

For the state governments that can’t establish any, they can have a neuropsychiatric department in their various general hospitals or health centres and then provide specialists to manage the department. Because there is no way the few psychiatric hospitals we have in the country can cater for the entire population. That is why we must bring treatment closer to the people.
The number of qualified psychiatrists every year is increasing, so we should take advantage of that and increase psychiatric facilities all over the country. It’s not that we have enough doctors, but let’s maximise the ones we have to capacity by putting more facilities in place.

With the population of persons in Nigeria who needs psychiatric attention, it is worrisome that we have only few neuropsychiatric hospitals and trained psychiatrists in the country making it difficult to meet the medical needs of the people.

It is cost effective, if specialist hospitals like ours are located in every area of the country. Most times we admit people here who come from the eastern and northern parts of Nigeria. The distance itself is enough to discourage any patient. Even though we don’t have enough psychiatric hospitals, but we have general hospitals all over. I would recommend that each general hospital establish a neuropsychiatric unit so that psychiatric treatment will be closer to the people than the current status.

On number of psychiatric personnel in the country

Though the numbers of professional psychiatrists we have now have increased compared to before, the country still needs more personnel. I am advising that more doctors specialise in psychiatry. Let it not be that we don’t have enough personnel to man neuropsychiatric hospitals or neuropsychiatric units of general hospitals, when eventually we have more psychiatric centres in the country.

According to statistics, about 12.5 per cent of Nigerians have one form of psychiatric disorder or another, which is about 21.2 million Nigerians. This is why we need more hands; more psychiatrists, more health workers and more health facilities, so that we will be able to cope with treatment and management of psychiatric issues in Nigeria.

Misconceptions and myths around psychiatric illness

There are lots of myths and misconceptions surrounding psychiatric illness in Africa, especially in Nigeria. There are people who refuse to visit the hospital or bring their sick ones for treatment, because they believe psychiatric illness is a spiritual issue. Hence, they would prefer to take such patients to spiritual healing homes or faith organisations so as to get cure through spiritual means. Majority only take neuropsychiatric hospitals as their last resort. And you know when cases are not presented on time, they are often more difficult to treat.

This is one of the reasons people don’t present their cases to the hospital, thereby preventing such persons from getting proper medical attention. So, what I do is that when I come across such persons, I tell them to bring their sick loved ones to the hospital whilst educating them that there are drugs for the treatment of the illnesses.

People should understand that psychiatric illness is also like other illnesses which require medical attention. And now we have good drugs just like the ones in developed countries.