Group Tackles Mental Health in Lagos with New Trauma Care Centre

By Rebecca Ejifoma

JARS Education Group, a Lagos community mental health/trauma care initiative, has unveiled a community trauma care centre, Asak Wellness Centre, in Ifako area of the state as an effort to combat mental health.

The centre aims to help people living with stress, emotional and psychological instability to regain mental balance against any form of psychosis.

For the CEO and Convener, JARS Education Group, Prof. Akindotun Merino, Asak Wellness Centre became more pressing following the level of stress Lagosians experience daily.

Among the stress triggers in Lagos, Merino listed traffic, abusive bosses at work, and violence in various families.

She, therefore, suggested that the state needed dire attention in handling the mental health of citizens, while lamenting that the country loses N57 billion yearly to mental health issues.

Merino said: “These are people who do not go to work because they are in a depressed state. It is not about insane people; this is about all of us.

“Mental wellness is that we are psychologically safe, emotionally healthy, financially viable, socially collected, and it is that we are a community helping each other so that we can be better in Nigeria.”

In her speech, the wife of the Lagos State Governor, Dr. Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, acknowledged the importance of mental health while lamenting that awareness is abysmally low, “thus necessitating a deliberate measure towards bringing to the front burner the pertinent factors relating to mental illnesses in Nigeria”.

Citing the World Health Organisation (WHO), the first lady decried that Nigeria has Africa’s highest caseload of depression, and ranks 15th in the world in suicide cases.

Represented by a Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychologist, Dr Olayinka Jibunoh, she added that the number of psychiatrists in the country has been established to be a far cry when juxtaposed with the percentage of mentally ill Nigerians.

She added: “The staggering reality certainly is a pointer to the fact that all hands have to be on deck towards improving the help-seeking behaviour on.

“The Lagos State government is seriously committed to the wellbeing and welfare of residents. And no efforts will be spared towards playing up all aspects of health care including mental health.”