i practice as a psychiatrist here in the UK and returned recently from a trip to nigeria after many years away. one of my aunties came to me complaining of a long list of symptoms which,from the perspective of medical training did not add up to any coherent whole. in fact some of her symptoms appeared quite funny to some of her doctors who were not psychiatists and out of embarassment she had stopped going to see doctors.
i have anonymized her details for confidentiality and it is impossible to identify her from the following account.

briefly she is a fifty something year old lady who works very hard to support her husband ,who quite frankly is a drunkard and a waster. she has 2 children in university but recently discovered that her son had been expelled  years ago for cult activities and would not graduate this year as expected.
her daughter is not very bright and is not doing well,she is also sexually loose.

she complained of breathlessnes which was so bad she would wake up in the middle of the night unable to breathe. chest pains. a sensation of something pulling her in her stomach and internal heat. sometimes for no reason she will feel as if she is about to die.she has spent thousands of naira on doctors tests and hundreds of tablets. people recommend all kind of things which she just buys without stopping what she had been taking previously. she joined a new church and undertook all kinds of humiliating rituals to no avail.

i advised her to stop all her medication and placed her on psychotropic medication. one tablet daily  and she reported marked improvement within seven days and one month later her symptoms have disappeared.

i believe this lady had a mixture of anxiety and depressive symptoms which were probably perpetuated by the stress of her social circumstances. in nigeria unlike here in the west you cannot stop to function(be exempted from from your duties as a wife,mother etc) unless there is clear physical illness and so the mind works to produce these cluster of symptoms which are physical but will show nothing on testing. many psychiatrists believe that the mind and the body are one. anxiety occurs in men too in several ways and can be a cause of sexual difficulties and often leads to drinking problems in an attempt at self-medication. a very common complaint is the sensation of internal heat or of strong tension in the stomach accompanied by feeling that something  bad is about to happen. not every case of anxiety is straightforward some are related to attacks e.g. armed robbers, or rape and manifest long after these events so that the sufferer might not even link the event with his suffering. sadly these people become victims of many pastors who claim their is a spell at work.
there is still a lot of stigma attched to seeing a psychiatrist people always ask
[b]am i mental?[b]
the simple answer is everyone one suffers anxiety but we are able to manage it differently.some people never learn how to do this and suffer greatly as a result. do not hesitate to ask your doctor if you could benefit from psychiatric help. it does not mean you are crazy but it could stop you going mad.
it is important to know your mind if you will live a mature and healthy psychological life.

Just one concern with regards to your post. Your thread title is a little bit misleading because you dealt with only a limited number of people to even suggest that anxiety is a common disorder in Nigeria.


Just my two cents.

ElRazur:

Just one concern with regards to your post. Your thread title is a little bit misleading because you dealt with only a limited number of people to even suggest that anxiety is a common disorder in Nigeria.


Just my two cents.
sorry sir but you two cents are not worth very much .
i did not say anxiety is a common disorder in nigeria,surely you can read? but i will say it now. IT IS any way though i did not say that before.the purpose of my write up was not to establish that because this is not the right place. at any rate it has already been settled in the the medical literature(WHO) that anxiety is a common disorder among all peoples of the earth. i am trying to raise the awareness of this in a social  forum in language that is deliberately simple and non technical.
in a technical forum i would have defined the word COMMON and observed basic scholastic rigor.
the only purpose your write up serves seems to  me a desire to be controversial and thus attract attention to yourself. if you  believe that anxiety is not common among nigerians as i said previously  or in nigeria as i am  now asserting say so and ask questions and if you had done so politely i would have taken time to supply you with some literature

.
as it is your comment does not add value

ElRazur:

Just one concern with regards to your post. Your thread title is a little bit misleading because you dealt with only a limited number of people to even suggest that anxiety is a common disorder in Nigeria.


Just my two cents.

sorry sir but you two cents are not worth very much .
i did not say anxiety is a common disorder in nigeria,surely you can read? but i will say it now. IT IS any way though i did not say that before.the purpose of my write up was not to establish that because this is not the right place. at any rate it has already been settled in the the medical literature(WHO) that anxiety is a common disorder among all peoples of the earth. i am trying to raise the awareness of this in a social forum in language that is deliberately simple and non technical.
in a technical forum i would have defined the word COMMON and observed basic scholastic rigor.
the only purpose your write up serves seems to me a desire to be controversial and thus attract attention to yourself. if you believe that anxiety is not common among nigerians as i said previously or in nigeria as i am now asserting say so and ask questions and if you had done so politely i would have taken time to supply you with some literature
.
as it is your comment does not add value

You said "Anxiety is a common disorder among Nigerian" and yet, your write up reflected very limited number of people with "Anxiety".  Do you not see how your thread title is misleading? 

It is like meeting a Nigerian or two with Dementia and then claiming it is a common disorder amongst Nigerian.  Surely, you can see how generalising your statement was?

The bottom-line is that your original claim based on the interpretation of your experience is at least misleading.  There is very little statistical data to warrant such claims.



If you are raising awareness, I have no problem with that. However, I just feel the context in which you have used the thread title do not stand up to scrutiny.

clearly you need to fight with someone . i am not interested. okay. if the article is not useful to you move on
bye

my objective here is to illustrate with one example and to see how this resonates with other peoples experience. i will also discuss any specific examples that are contributed but i do not regard this as an academic forum and aim to restrict my discussion to general and easily understood ideas.
i am keen to get peoples reactions and hopefully this will lead to even more research.

there is however quite a lot of research on anxiety in nigeria.
for anyone who is interested in more information about how common anxiety is  among nigerians this information is readily available on the internet just google (anxiety disorder and prevalence in nigeria).some studies have shown rates as high as  1  in 5  depending on the population group studied. it may be higher it may be lower,who knows but in my opinion it is common.

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