 As part of measures to leave the increase in cases of mental health in the bud, stakeholders have made a renewed call for mental health to be included into the primary school curriculum in the country. Now this was re-echoed at the year 2020 suicide research and prevention initiative of Nigeria Serpin. The conference was themed sharing experiences and it was hinting here in Lagos. Our correspondent love Oyidokun tells us more in this report. Seated, our health experts and members of the suicide research and prevention initiative, Serpin, they are here to deliberate on mental health issues and how its negative consequences can be dealt with. They argued that mental health is as important as the physical. As we are focused on the physical let's also focus on the mental and it's important to start from when they're in primary school because a lot of these problems that we see stem from some childhood adversity. There are a lot of times that some people with mental illnesses starts early in their childhood it may even start in their teens you know. So it's important that we start letting them know that it's okay for you to experience certain emotions but it doesn't mean that you have to hide those emotions. What you need to do is ask for help if you're going through certain things there's no shame in it everybody goes through it just ask for help. Serpin strongly believes that parents have limitless rules to play in the early detection of mental health and suicide tendencies in children. They also want a society to stop stigmatizing against people who suffer from mental illnesses but rather show empathy and love. The parents need to begin to equip their children from a young age so parenting has a very major role. The other thing that we see is the issue of resilience you know so parents need to be deliberate you know in bringing up children. It's also important for parents to be observant you need to be very observant you know so that at any point in time when they notice something that is untoward about their children they notice changes in behavior you know changes in their countenance changes in mood they can become more observant and if there's a need they can ask reach out. So with the diagnosis of chronic health problem you know that maybe cancer it might be HIV it might be something they feel it's overwhelming and taking over their lives and we also have a lot of students who call because of school pressure academic pressure and you know so the reality is it's um it's wide open there's so many people that are going through challenges that we make them suddenly impulsively you know take a decision a rash decision of attempting to take their lives that if they do survive they will say that it was at that point in time I just felt as if there was no hope. The program was both educative and expository as people had attempted suicide as a result of mental health issues share personal experiences. In my own case I made a conscious effort not to let it affect me by speaking up on my own issues so I'm one of those people that recover loudly I don't let my challenges to affect me as a matter of fact if I see you on the street I start talking to you about it I said do you know that I suffered from this so before you even stigmatize me I've already talked about what I was going through. Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life. It is also an integral component of health that underpins individual and collective abilities to make decisions. The suicide research and prevention initiative of Nigeria Serpim believes that suicide as a fallout of mental health can be avoided if the society embraces the sufferer. Love Uyiduku. Plus TV news.