Nigeria’s mental health system absurd, says US based psychotherapist

Nigeria’s mental health delivery system has been described as horrendous and absurd by a United States of America based licensed professor of psychotherapy, Eze Ekele Alphonsus Ngwadom.

Ngwadom made this revelation during a chat with Business Hallmark at the Barrister Peter Mbah Law Auditorium, Godfrey Okoye University, Enugu, when his team of mental health experts launched the Nigeria – American Institute for Mental Health.

According to him, ” There are about seven mental health hospitals in Nigeria with a population of about 200 million people. In the same vien, we have just about 20,000 psychotherapists in a country with such high population. Approximately, we are talking of one psychotherapist to about two million people. This is apparently horrendous and obviously absurd. It is not possible and this is what we have come to correct and solve”.

He regrettably explained that most of Nigeria’s mental healthcare best hands were based overseas thereby making effective service delivery in the sector rather excruciating.

In his opinion, he made it apparently clear that the failure of Nigeria’s ruling class, particularly the politicians, in utilizing the money and resources budgeted for adequate mental health was another cause for concern.

“It is rather a mental health challenge on itself that a Nigerian politician or government official will wrongly appropriate huge amount of money and resources meant for mental health for their private use. Rather than investing the funds on what they are meant for, they would instead buy 10 or 20 cars, erect mansions with nobody living in them in the cities and their communities as well as embarking on needless overseas trips. These are some of the reasons mental health delivery system in the country has been bad”, he enthused.

However, Ngwadom noted that this would be a thing of the past with the successful launch of the Nigeria – America Institute for Mental Health as it would profer solutions to most of the challenges facing the industry in the country.