 We're glad to know that you're still there. It's still the breakfast on PLOS TV Africa. And right now we're just...in a moment's time we're going to be joined by an ex-part in mental health and she will be talking to us about some of the things that happened. But at this point I'd like to just say bravo to all the people who have survived depression, who have survived a lot of things that happened here in Nigeria. Especially like housewives, for instance, that maybe after so many years you still don't have a child and families and friends will be on your case. After wedding, the first question they ask you maybe after a few months is, I hope something is coming on. Whether you have planned your family to start making babies after three years, they don't care, they just want the next nine months for you to have a baby. And I saw on the papers today a cleric who had a child with the wife for the first time after 35 years of marriage. And I was just clapping. And then we also have the story of Undo first female speaker Jumoke Akindili Ajiulo who has given birth for the first time at 54. I wonder what she went through to get to this point. And I wonder how much of joy. I'm just imagining the kind of joy that will be in that household now. Congratulations to you, madam. A whole lot of congratulations there. You know, marriage is one of the... I read yesterday some of the... Because we've never had the cases of suicide in this country as we've seen it in recent times. And mental health cases are, as we said earlier, issues that people really didn't talk much about in Nigeria. But now it's become a thing. And some of the triggers, some of the things that trigger it, which I saw yesterday, is marriage. Marriage, poverty, not having enough money available to you, living in some certain kind of areas. These are some of the triggers. Stress is a major trigger for depression and mental health illnesses. But depression is just one of the expressions of mental illnesses. There are different expressions of it. You have bipolar disorder. You have anxiety. You have different things. So it is good that people have themselves diagnosed. It's good that people go have themselves checked so that they can know what stage they are if they have such issues. So that they can easily assess treatment and then get it sorted out as soon as possible. I want to say poverty. It's not just money. It's poor in a lot of other things. But you have a lot of money. Was it Bob Malley or one of the philosophers who said that some people are so poor that the only thing they have is money? And I have a lot of friends, for instance, in the UK, in America, especially in the UK, that will tell you that if one thing will kill them is depression in that place, and it's not because they're not making the money, but because they don't have a social life anymore. You are just on your own. It's not like here. You go on the street. You can always meet someone. You can visit friends and all that. But there you just go to work. You come back home and you are all alone. So maybe for that person it may not be poverty of money, but poverty of friends. You know, you don't have the things that make your social life complete and all that. So whatever the lack is, it could lead to something that you do not want to degenerate into something else. So mental health comes in various ways. And the only thing that you need to do is to check. To check and to check and to check. Yeah, you know that you've mentioned the UK. You know, in the UK they have mental health hospitals. So many of them, some by government, you know, the NHS. And then you have by individuals. You're privately owned. You have those owned by NGOs. But here in Nigeria, I'm not sure we have enough of it. I don't think we do. We know about the psychiatric hospital in Yaba. But apart from that, not much is known of any other. Do you understand? So these are some of the things that we probably need to begin to take note of in this climb. To see to it that because you do not need to wait until you see somebody strip naked, run around the streets before we say, oh, something should have been done. This is the time. And that's why it's important that we're talking about it. The awareness that it will create for people to begin to take note that yes, this is a thing that they should be taking note of. This is a thing that they need to be mindful of so that they can maintain a state of well-being, a positive state of well-being. Yeah. And we should also note that even at some point where someone gets to go naked, that's not the end of it. They can still go to a psychiatric home, get what they help the need, come out as people that can still contribute. Because a celebrity recently, I can't even remember the name, a lady, I know it's a lady, that went naked, was walking naked on the street and was taken to where she could get help. And she's back on her feet and doing whatever she needed to do. So we don't wait and then someone gets naked and then the next thing you do is change that person to somewhere and be beating the person and saying you're giving treatment. It shouldn't work that way. It's good to mention that aspect where people are changed. There was a time, I think two years ago, three years ago, we had so many incidences where some religious homes were found to have places where they changed children and adults in the name of treating them of mental illnesses and that is just definitely not a way to go. And some of them are just because they changed religion anyway. Yeah, and some because of drug addiction. Some because they were stubborn to their parents and stuff like that. You know, we really need to do something. I'm very excited we're talking about this. Let's hope that when we talk about it that it will create the level of awareness that we hope to see it create. I'm also looking forward to a time when we will have private practice of these therapies and all the people that we need in this field of mental health so that some people may be more comfortable going to private people who don't necessarily have to be called Yaba left, because when you go to that place it becomes like you are bonkers. Sadly, that's not how it should be. You're still watching The Breakfast on Plus TV Africa. We'll take a break. I'll be back to treat some of these topics in depth. You're welcome back. We're now being joined by the Chief Nursing Officer, Mental Health in Lassoud, in the person of Mrs. Dada Adesola Oluwatosin. Welcome to the program Ma. Morning, sir. How are you doing today? Fine. Work us through how the response has been like in the mental health facility. You know, we have been observing that maybe now people are talking more about mental health but maybe that's just a supposition we are having and it's not true. What's the state of things? How are people, how are Nigerians now taking them issue of mental health? Good morning. Yes, when we talk about mental health I think people are being, the people are getting more awareness now because you understand that back in those days when you say you should be your brother's keeper is more than that now. When you see someone that is going through a form of stress, people are now being more helpful, more responsive, ready to come to their aid. And even for those that do not want to speak out when they have issues, you discover that you find people trying to move close to them just to ascertain and check on them whether they have any issues bothering them and once you are able to identify people make extra effort to ensure that in their own little way they are able to salvage the situation at some point. So with this I think people are becoming more aware of their mental health because nobody wants to find themselves or ourselves in the state of mental illness and as a result of that we are doing everything possible just to ensure that such it can be controlled though it cannot be averted completely. Would you say we have a large number of people with mental illnesses in Nigeria or it's just us imagining that we have up to 60 million people? How have been the cases in the hospital where you work? We have lots of people with mental illness. It's just that it's only those that you see presenting in the hospital so you begin to look at it that when you want to use that statistic you might not be getting it. But even most people working in the even within our homes, within the neighbourhood many people have mental issues mental illness. Though they may not come down with fully fledged mental illness because mental illness itself is encompassing. You have diverse things that you can pick out but the practitioner can easily detect and look at it that this person I'm seeing is not really there and at some point you look at it that if care is not taking things might get out of hand but when you look at the statistic coming to the hospital compared to the statistic we have some years back people are becoming more responsive the number of people we have I think at least on a weekly basis to get the statistic. If I want to tell you that these are the multiple number of people we see presenting our own health facility we see like 200 cases 200 patients coming over in a week I'm just using that as an approximation now we see more but at least on the average we get like 200 patients we see on a weekly basis and when you want to tell you that in a year in a month it's a number it's a number describe for us describe for us the most common types the most common types of mental disorders including their early signs and how to treat them the most common types of mental disorder you see is schizophrenia and we see depression but majorly depression is actually having an age over schizophrenia and I think this is because of the prevailing situation in the country now which affect home affect children, affect husbands affect individual is it poverty you want to talk about not being motivated to walk and when people are responding you just see a cheerful person coming to walk looking moody not wanting to talk to anybody and you even look at them and you are like ah is this you and when it's going to start like that it's just something that just have to move an eye you can just start with neglect of personal hygiene the person loses interest in pleasurable activities not wanting to socialize and at times they lock up themselves in a particular environment not wanting to be they just want to be in their own comfort zone and of course that comfort zone is a dangerous zone to them because they are not willing to talk to anybody and if this progress over time without nobody coming to help and not being able to recognize this then diverse thoughts begins to come in and when they begin to have delusion of worklessness then when it gets to that point to see an individual looking at it that it's better to end it all and when we get to that point of ending it all that's the most dangerous period of an individual because you just see they just say they looked at it they couldn't find it they found themselves with committed suicide and things and things like that so that is about the question but when you talk about hallucination and when you talk about schizophrenia just schizophrenia 2 is there but the difference between schizophrenia and depression is that in depression help is being sought the patients can move from that period of depression 2 another move that we call a manic phase but both are not really good but when a patient is even in a manic phase you can still control you can still control to some extent at least you can see the person coming out with what they are saying what are ventilations from their mind you are able to pick one or two things but when in depression the patient is not even talking at all you cannot say this is where the problem is except to make an extra effort what is schizophrenia schizophrenia is complete split of mind there is complete distortion there is no orientation to time, place and person there is hallucination, there is delusion there is paranoia and for this to be corrected it takes a longer period of time for you to be able to get a reasonable a reasonable when you look at it you want to appraise your treatment it takes a while before you can say yes this patient is really coming up is coming back to his primordial state just walk us through some of the things that need mental care because you have mentioned depression and one other but there might be a lot of things that we just overlook meanwhile we need to seek help when we see these things so mention some of the things that should take us to the mental health facility or should make us seek help from an expert you were asking some other things that should prompt want to seek help in mental health and that would have also been followed by how many of these facilities we have in the country of the manpower, like we were talking about whether there are people in private practice and all that, even the government how many mental health experts do we even have in this country and now there is a jacquba syndrome so I don't even know doctors are going and they are part of the doctors and especially in other climes they need them even more because those people recognize the importance of mental health and I don't know how many are in Nigeria now so she mentioned 200 per week how many people attend to the 200 per week because mental health issue most times it's a one on one kind of thing that you go through therapy it's a continuous thing because from what I gathered in the UK for instance when you've been treated in the hospitals after that when you're discharged from the hospitals you then go to the private hospitals that's those run by individuals who sometimes they have a home and different patients are in different rooms being attended to until they eventually get out of it and get stable enough to be let out, even when they do get let out they are being monitored carefully. So it is a whole lot of processes involved in taking care of this. Hello I wonder if we've been able to get Mrs. Dada back I'm not sure she's there well we've been talking to Mrs. Dada Adeshola Oluwatosin chief nursing officer mental health nurse in Lasut and she was giving us an insight into what is happening and the good thing about what she said is that people are now beginning to see the importance of going to get these checks and whether it is for you or for someone you love or someone you have seen on the street and taken compassion on or anything we need these expertise we need these mental health checks for all of us like we said earlier on you said that everybody living in Lagos is in a traffic situation in Lagos we know people in Lagos sleep in two places one in the office and one at home because you get home late and you have to get up in the morning even if you have a car of your own you have to get up to beat traffic so you come very early in the morning and you get to the office before six o'clock and you're supposed to resume at eight so you take that time to sleep a little bit that doesn't happen anywhere else Lagos is peculiar so we need these checks and all that is not something that we should be stigmatizing the people who get the help I think now that it's out there unlike it used to be people are more exposed about it, people are beginning to see that when you talk about mental health wellness you're not talking about people who have gone bonkers completely but even if it is that one has gone bonkers completely why stigmatize instead of help and that brings to mind what we've been experiencing or noticing in recent times especially since the advent of handsets, mobile phones where instead of people helping people in crisis or in need the first thing that comes to mind is to take photographs and videos so you're quick to upload and I think Nigerians should begin to go back to the core we are a communal people we care for one another we understand of people that do not give a hoot about the next person your next enable we should go back to our core and begin to know who is my neighbor how is my neighbor doing and also I also have come to understand from experts and from reading that exercising maybe not regularly because some of us are not that disciplined I'm guilty of exercising on a daily but try and exercise as much as you can with mental well being something that maybe it's not related but I think it is it's bad enough for someone to have down syndrome and I've noticed that so many families with children with down syndrome just say ok because it's a human being let me not kill the person you lock that person inside a room you don't let that person come out friends and family must not see that person because the person has down syndrome so down syndrome plus another thing which could lead to mental health problems for a down syndrome person it's double wahala like a fella would say so you have a down syndrome person it doesn't make that person less of a human being in fact some of them have specialties special skills yes if the focus on that skill find out that nobody else in the world may be able to do that for instance this guy who if he flies on a plane once he lands he can draw the aerial view of even if it's New York he has that who else can do that but he has down syndrome there is another guy who nearly won the America Got Talent the other time he has down syndrome and he was blind as well he would play the keyboard and sing beautifully he went to like three of the stages and nearly won so if someone has down syndrome yes they need special care but special care also should come with special love not to lock them inside the room because even I if you lock me inside a room a normal person becomes abnormal man I'm not sure how I will survive one week in a place locked in there I know that they don't want me to come out that is I don't have the kind of love that a normal person should have it will affect me so if a normal person can be affected then why would you treat people that way so please we should be our brothers keepers I'll revert to our real African ways of being our brothers keepers in fact in almost all the languages I don't know about your language but in my language greetings I question asking how you're doing good morning is not good morning don't ask you did you wake up well was it well with you in the night are you sitting are you sitting okay are you standing are you standing there are all questions showing that we used to care we used to care we need to start going back to caring yeah okay so we're hoping that we're still going to be joined we can tell us about Sudan but in the meantime we'll take a short break we also have in the mix sports coming up later on before we close but we'll just take this short break and we'll be back in a moment