Most Nigerians are still living in denial with regards to the existence of mental health challenges with many of the religious fanatics still attributing it to spiritual attacks in the 21st century.

As a matter of urgency, schools in Nigeria at all levels need mental health protection for their students so as to avert a national calamity that would add to the country’s current plethora of challenges.

Nigerians woke up to the news of the alleged brutal murder of Sylvester Oromoni of Dowen College by some suspected student cultists who tortured him to death for refusing to join their cult. As if that news wasn’t unpalatable enough, the nation was woken to the rude shock of some students of Chrisland school engaging in an orgy in faraway Dubai.

Some investigative journalists have drawn our attention to the existence of cult groups in secondary and even primary schools. Nigeria is indeed sitting on a time bomb and the schools need a government backed protection to safeguard the mental health of its students.

How many Nigerians are aware of the fact that there are trained child and adolescent psychiatrists who specialize in child and adolescent psychiatry in a similar way that you have paediatricians?

The acute shortage of psychiatrists in the ‘Giant of Africa’ may be largely responsible for this ignorance. This is a fall out of the government neglect of the health sector but it is a discussion for another day.

Private schools should go beyond charging exorbitant school fees to taking proper care of the students and pupils entrusted in their care which also involves minding and given protection to their mental health.

The government can make it compulsory for all Nigerian teachers to be trained as mental health first aiders to be able to promptly diagnose if a student has a mental health challenge and escalate it to the school authorities and their parents. The curriculum should also include the students learning about the basics of mental health and signs to look out for if they have challenges with it.

The protection of mental health in our schools is a sine qua non to national development as many social vices will be nipped in the bud if the students’ mental health is in good shape.

It makes no sense to prioritize academic learning over that of character which good mental health has a huge role to play in its shaping.

One of the best novels in literature is the ‘Lord of the Flies’ written by William Golding who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. The novel was about young boys who were stranded in an Island after a plane accident and became worse than beasts due to the lack of adult supervision. At the end of the novel, the protagonist, Jack had supervised many killings of his fellow boys.

Our Nigerian students can become another Jack if mental health protection is neglected in our schools. One of the seven deadly sins listed by Mahatma Ghandi is education without character and the mental health neglect by our uncaring successive governments is churning out demons in the name of students who will unleash their venom into the society.

The ministry of education should work closely with mental health experts – psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, social workers and stakeholders to formulate sturdy public policies that will guarantee the students’ mental health protection. We cannot have a situation whereby these impressionable and vulnerable students having been negatively influenced by social media and their peers do despicable things to the chagrin of decent minded people.

Parents even need some training as the conditions in which they grew up as children is different from what obtains today. Even the millennials who constitute a large bulk of today’s parents didn’t grow up with the internet and social media and so the external negative influence was far less. Who could have imagined that the ten-year-old Chrisland student girl could have a Likee account with thousands of followers where she regularly posted raunchy videos? Parents need to be on top of their game so as to give protection to their children or ward’s mental health.

The stakeholders – government, parents, school owners should act now and progressive minded legislators at all levels should sponsor bills to make it law so that it has a sturdy and sustainable legal framework.

SOURCE: https://africavoiceshq.com/2022/05/02/urgently-needed-mental-health-protection-in-nigerian-schools-by-tony-ademiluyi/

Great idea. Schools can make researches on the red flags to watch out for