The Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN) says less than 200 psychiatrists are available to address the mental health needs of over 200 million Nigerians.
Taiwo Obindo, the association’s president, spoke on Thursday at the opening of its 55th annual general conference and scientific meeting in Ilorin, Kwara state.
He attributed the shortfall partly to the “japa syndrome,” a term referring to the mass emigration of professionals from Nigeria in search of better opportunities abroad.
Obindo warned that the development has left the remaining mental health practitioners overstretched and underpaid, further exacerbating the crisis.
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The APN president also criticised the government’s insufficient focus on mental health.
He noted that while countries like Canada have a dedicated ministry of mental health and addictions, in Nigeria, mental health services remain a subprogramme within the department of public health in the ministry of health.
“Mental health in Nigeria is still a programme under the department of public health in the Federal Ministry of Health,” NAN quoted him as saying.
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“One other area needing attention is the budgetary allocation to health, and by extension, mental health, which is less than six percent.
“This falls short of the Abuja Declaration of 2001, where health allocation was to be pegged at a minimum of 15 percent of every country’s annual budget.”
In his lecture, Owoidoho Udofia, a professor at the University of Calabar, said the presence of culture specific somatic symptoms, significantly lowered identification rate of mental illness by general practitioners in teaching hospitals.
The consultant psychiatrist dismissed the assumption that Africans are not sophisticated enough to have depression.
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“Mental illness makes up less than 30 percent of the burden in teaching hospitals in Nigeria,” he said.
“The illness is not only restricted to schizophrenia and psychosis. Substance use is high and there is need to improve diagnosis.”
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