MENTAL ILLNESS IN NIGERIA
Knowledge of mental illness is still very poor in Nigeria. Many view mental illness in the purview of the supernatural: borne either as repercussion for previous misdeeds or as an affliction from the desperately wicked. The picture of mental illness in many minds is in fact limited to the dirty, violent schizophrenic on the street. Such is the belief in the demonic connectedness of the mentally ill that gamblers sometimes seek them to get winning predictions. And they probably have success stories.
No thanks to psychosis, mentally ill people commonly live in virtual reality. They hear voices, they see things that are not there. So it’s understandable that a lay man would seek them for vision of the future or of baba ijebu numbers.
Because they are often deluded about the grandiosity of their own abilities, mentally ill people themselves wear such toga of supernatural powers with glee. Thus, the misperception of the public is positively reinforced. Particularly when such delusions of grandeur come with a religious theme. For example, when a mentally ill person thinks he is a prophet.
These biases and poor knowledge of the causes, features, forms, and treatment options of the disease contribute to the stigma that accompanies it. There are not many things a Nigerian considers more denigrating than to insinuate that he is somehow not in his right senses. To call a Nigerian mad is the pinnacle of insults.
Whether it is an established diagnosis or a misguided label on those who are judged strange or unusual, people will start speaking in hushed tones of sympathy.
The stereotype can be so damning that those who are wrongly labelled find it so hard to fight off. The harder they argue they are normal, the more passionately they protest, the more the label is confirmed. People will generously compromise and defer to them in conversations. Since the mentally ill are
generally not expected to agree they are unwell.
But there is a flip side to that. Madness, as it is called in street lingo, is only denigrating to the Nigerian when it is clinically diagnosed or when the label comes from the mouth of another.
For the Nigerian, madness is considered fashionable when it is self-confessed and brandished in threats, disputes, and contentions with others. In those dialogues, madness or street craze is paraded as an exclusive preserve. Everyone tries to outdo his opponent.
The latest of such exchanges I saw was uploaded on a friend’s timeline. It looks like a protest from a lady about extra work. It went thus: ‘finish this one and prepare for the next one’; then she exploded, ‘which next one? You even know me. Me that the nut in my head is not complete. That i’m just using hand to hold the ones there in place….”
That’s it. A lady openly insinuates she’s insane. That she’s in fact a ‘patch patch’ work that can easily degenerate if provoked. And she considers it fashionable. We are supposed to admire her for it. She should be feared for it. It provides leverage in negotiations. Well, you dare her at your own peril.
The Yoruba variants are richer. The richness is almost lost in the English translation, but I’ll try. With a menacing look followed by sounds of pity, it goes ‘ hmmm. O je so ra e . Ara mi oya o. Mi o fi tara tara gbadun o. Hmmm. Ti n ba se were fun e, wa sa o ‘. ( hmmm. Be careful o. I’m not well o. I’m not completely stable o. Hmm. if I should display my lunacy, you won’t wait o ...)
An interesting twist is that not every well-dressed person is truly mentally okay. Like one out of every four people suffers one form of mental illness or the other: generalised anxiety disorder, phobias, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, substance use disorders, sleep disorders ... Mental illness is all around, we just don’t know. ‘Sola Adeyoose, Lagos