We need to stop them before they go further (Photo by Nabeel Syed on Unsplash) So here’s the latest on Nigeria’s Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC Nigeria) and their poorly thought out and potentially harmful plan for motorists, which I’m going to try to show as dangerous and worthy to be scrapped post-haste. This is not …
Continue reading “FRSC Nigeria wants to reverse Nigeria, mental health-wise”
(Except we can agree malaria and measles are, too.) On October 30, 2016, a prominent and otherwise widely respected Nigerian pastor tweeted: “The root cause of mental illness is Sin (Rom 6:23) and the foundational solution to mental health is Salvation.” Let’s just say the tweet ended up deleted. Amid the subsequent furore on Nigerian Twitter …
Continue reading “I’m Christian and I don’t believe mental illness is “spiritual””
This post is in honour of World Suicide Prevention Day — September 10 every year — and the theme this year is, “Connect. Communicate. Care.” Connect. Communicate. Care. Three words that capture three key concepts in suicide prevention. And when you think about it, what they all have in common is that they’re things we can do for …
Continue reading “Do you too believe these 8 misconceptions about suicide?”
Interview! So earlier this year (this was in April 2016) I was interviewed by a postgraduate student from Australian National University. Her name? Jennifer Kabangu, from Congo-Kinshasa, and she’s presently completing a Masters in Culture, Health and Medicine. As part of her research at the time, she was investigating the effects of culture on mental health, and vice versa. She found me …
So the other day I came across this headline in the national dailies announcing a new “initiative” from our dearly beloved police: AIG orders mental tests on Lagos policemen. (I actually was late to the party as it had been announced since mid-August and I only happened on it by the end of the month.) But you know when you see something …
Continue reading “Police to do “mental test” but I’m worried. Here’s why.”
This is an article I submitted as part of a series titled, “Mental Health: The Missing Piece in Maternal Health.” It’s a blog series co-hosted by the Maternal Health Task Force and the Mental Health Innovation Network at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, as well as Dr. Jane Fisher of Monash University. Find the original article on the website of the Mental Health …
Continue reading “Stigma and the Language of Mental Health in Mothers”
I was recently in a car with a couple of friends (they were actually a couple!) and the husband suddenly started laughing. His wife asked him what was funny and turning to me, he pointed out the window and said, laughter still in his voice: “Isn’t that one of your patients?” I looked in the …