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Going Bunkers!
Experts raise alarm on the increasing number of Nigerians who are taken to psychiatric hospitals and homes on daily basis with serious mental health disorders
By Chidiebere Onyemaizu
It was little past 10 a.m but the
medium-sized hall that houses the
prayer house was already brimming with people from different parts of the metropolis who had come to seek cure – or answer – to many of their problems. In a clear majority out of this lot were those with seemingly intractable health conditions. Located in the Ogudu-Ojota area of the Lagos metropolis, the superintendent of the prayer house in question is often spoken of in whispers as possessing uncanny spiritual powers to exorcise demonic spirits out of individuals who lay prostrate to them, in addition to having answers to numerous illness that have defied western medication. Wednesday of each week is set aside for these tasks.
On this particular Wednesday, therefore, noisy supplications to the Most High and ceaseless invocation of His name to free those supposedly held captive by alleged evil had reached feverish pitch when suddenly a middle-aged man broke loose from the rhapsodic crowd and ran as fast as his wobbly legs could permit; on his heels were some male workers in the prayer house who gave a hot chase.
Initially, by-standers were bemused as they rained causes on the fleeing man, wondering why a man in his right senses would in a broad daylight rob a home of God: they obviously mistook the man for a robber fleeing from his crime. But he was not! Minutes later, the fleeing man was caught, chained hands and legs amidst sustained struggle against his captors who intermittently lashed him with horse whip popular as koboko. As he was being violently dragged along the street, the man who had only some fleeting minutes earlier done “Ben Johnson” with his legs ceaselessly muttered incomprehensible words. And then, a clearer picture of the situation dawned on the on-lookers. The man was afterall not a thief and had not stolen nothing rather his ability to think and reason properly has been stolen by only God-knows-what. The man is, simply put, mentally deranged!
The above scenario which is a common occurrence in parts of the country aptly underline the devastating mental health conditions confronting a sizeable number of Nigerians especially in the recent past, as well as the unspeakable indignities which people with such health disorder suffer in the hands of self-styled spiritualists and herbalists in the name of exorcising alleged demons, supposedly responsible for the health disorders.
If the recent reports which indicated that there is a sharp rise in the number of Nigerians afflicted with such mental disorder is anything to go by, then such patients whose relatives prefer to take to self-acclaimed healers such as spiritualists and herbalists to seek treatment, instead of accessing othordox western treatment, are in for a continued inhuman treatment. Instructively, the Chief Medical Director (CMD) of the Psychiatric Hospital recently Yaba, Lagos, Dr. Taiwo Ladapo, made a startling revelation regarding the increase in the number of Nigerians who are brought to the emergency ward of the hospital on daily basis, with fresh cases of mental health disorder.
According to Ladapo, no fewer than 18 patients are brought to the emergency ward of the hospital on daily basis. The figure, cautions Dr. Ladapo, is on the high side, especially when compared with the previous figure of 20 patients per week. The unsettling statistics, as reeled out by the CMD, also showed that comparative clincial statistics for the first two quarters of 2006 revealed a 5.4 per cent increase in the total number of new cases of people with mental health disorder.
According to the Chief Medical Director, within the same period under review, the total number of patients admitted into the hospital also increased by 7.2 per cent. There was also a 5.6 per cent rise in cases of children and adolescent boys and girls with mental health disorders. Many of the patients, the CMD further revealed, are brought in forcibly by their relatives, sometimes in chains and in most cases after they have attacked people on the streets. Only one per cent of the patients, he said, come to the hospital voluntarily.
The Source’s investigations revealed that most of the patients in the hospital were abandoned in the hospital by families members and relatives as soon as such families or relatives to settle the initial admission bills.
A consultant psychiatrist at the hospital, Dr. R. A. Lawal concurs. Lawal told The Source in a chat that cases of abandonment of patients by relatives are rampant in the hospital. Hear him: “We have patients who have been with us here for upward of 20 years.... as soon they are brought here by their relatives, they (the relatives) either supply fake addresses or quickly move out from their places of abode, making it difficult to trace them.”
Dr. Lawal argued, however, that the upsurge in the number of people with mental health disorder that are brought to the hospital does not necessarily translate into an increase in mental health disorder in the country, saying “a standard scientific study is required to confirm the observation before a definite conclusion is reached. But yes, there is an increase in patronage of psychiatric hospitals.”
The seeming upsurge in mental health disorders in the country, according to experts, is traceable to a number of factors which include drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, unfulfilled dreams and the country’s uninspiring socio-economic situation. But besides the factors enumerated above, Dr. Lawal averred that brain damage resulting from automobile accidents, malaria, HIV/AIDS, poor nutrition, loss of job or loved one and metabolic disorder, especially among children, could also lead to mental disorder in individuals.
A series of interactions which The Source had with experts also revealed that some mental health disorders could arise as a result of what they described as accumulation of metabolites” while illness could be due to “degenerative processes in the brain.” Specific chromosomal aberrations and genetic mutation, experts say, have also been accurately found to cause mental disorders.
The Source’s further findings also revealed that mental illness falls into three broad groups – mild, moderate and severe. The mild and moderate types are known as neurotic disorder (e.g morbid anxiety, stage panic, adjustment disorders, reactive depression, obsessional neurosis), in which case the patient have suggestive symptoms but their personalities are relatively maintained. The patients here often realise that certain things are wrong with them personally and usually go to see a doctor.
On the other hand, those with severe signs of mental problem hardly see a doctor on their own accord. Their cases, according to investigations, have gone beyond neurosis. Psychosis and schizophrenia, according to experts, also fall into the category of severe mental cases. Psychosis is characterised by illness, delusion, hallucination and mental confusion, while schizophrenia is a type of mental disorder marked by introversion, disassociation and inability to distinguish between reality and illusion.
The indignities and stigmatisation which people with mental disorder are often subjected to, The Source’s investigations revealed, is not, however, a recent phenomenon . In years past, The Source, gathered, psychiatric hospitals were more of remand homes. In those days – that is during the colonial era – once a supposed relation swore to an affidavit that somebody was mentally ill, the courts immediately sent such a person to a psychiatric home, supposedly in order to maintain public peace and protect other normal persons from the supposedly mad person.
The Source’s investigations showed that in those days, it was much easier getting into psychiatric homes than getting out. This was because even after the psychiatric homes have testified that the ‘mad’ person has been treated and has regained his/her sanity, the courts still had to counter-sign the release form before the patient is allowed to rejoin the society of normal persons.
Though the mode of admission into and discharge of mentally deranged persons from psychiatric hospitals that held sway during the colonial era no longer subsist in today’s Nigeria, what those who suffer from one form of mental disorder or the other are confronted with now is stigmatisation. Many families whose persons suffer from mental disorder often find ways of easing such persons out of the family structure through hook or crook, hence the growing incidence of abadonment of patients in psychiatric hospitals.
The abandonment and isolation which are often visited on mental disorder sufferers came to the fore a few years back when a certain female undergraduate in the Department of Mass Communication of one of the universities in the South-east zone of the country was practically abandoned in the school by her family. The girl, who failed virtually all the semester and sessional examinations, remained in the school hostel, neither going home to her family nor her family coming to inquire about her condition and general well-being. The resultant effect of this was that her mental health condition got aggravated.
Such indignities which are often meted out to people with mental health disorder by either their relatives or self acclaimed unorthordox healers, The Source’s investigation revealed, include severe beating in some churches and spiritual homes, burning or cutting of some parts of their bodies, scrapping of their hairs with broken bottle, and bounding them, hands and legs – all in the name of exorcising demons supposedly responsible for the mental disorder.
Meanwhile, the inhuman treatment and stigmatisation which mentally deranged people are often subjected to may soon be part of history when the proposed Mental Health Bill now before the National Assembly is eventually passed into law. The Bill, The Source learnt, seeks to among others, protect the rights and privileges of mentally sick people.
Instructively, the defeaning serenity that pervaled the entire environment of the psychictric hospital, Yaba at the time of The Source's visit dwarfed the age long impression of psychiatric hospitals as mad people's enclaves – a place where made people room about uncontrolably. Apart from the far-away looks and anxities which boldly registered on the faces of persons whose relations were on admission at the emmergency unit of the hospital, there was praactically nothing on ground to suggest that the hospital harbours hundreds of people who have lost control of their senses; hence Lawal's assertion that "insanity starts out there and ends here (in the hospital)."
Notably, up and until 1996, there were only three federal psychiatric hospitals in Nigeria. These were the Aro Psychiatric, Abeokuta and the Benin and Yaba Psychiatric Hospitals respectively. The Federal Government was to later establish five more psychiatric hospitals in Kaduna, Sokoto, Calabar, Enugu and Maiduguri, under the Psychiatric Hospital Management Board. |
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