Samuel Okinrodoye swam 12 kilometers along a famous bridge in Lagos to raise awareness about mental health in Nigeria. In Lagos, many people have used the 3rd Mainland Bridge to commit suicide. Okinrodoye wants to encourage Nigeria's conservative society to be more open about mental illnesses.
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School in Nigeria helps girls to heal after Boko Haram
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“We’d all be sitting in class and all of us would just be crying,” she says.
Like Usman, whose father was killed and family held captive by the militant jihadist group Boko Haram, all 100 women and girls at the school have either witnessed a parent’s murder or been kidnapped themselves.
Another pupil, 17-year-old Hassana, recalls being forced to join the militants, handling weapons and carry out acts of violence. “We drank blood,” she says.
Boko Haram has targeted schools as part of its campaign of atrocities in north-eastern Nigeria since 2010. It has carried out massacres and multiple abductions, including 2014’s killing of 59 schoolboys, the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls in Chibok in 2014 and 101 girls in Dapchi in 2018.
Between 2013 and 2018, according to the UN, Boko Haram abducted more than 1,000 children, using them as soldiers and domestic or sex slaves. Amnesty International has estimated that 1,436 schoolchildren and 17 teachers were abducted between December 2020 and October 2021.
The Lafiya Sarari school was set up in response to the terror Boko Haram has inflicted. Established in 2017 by the Neem Foundation, a Nigerian charity set up to help communities affected by violence, the school is designed to provide support and education to those who have suffered trauma.
“What we do is a trauma-informed learning approach,” says Dr Fatima Akilu, a psychologist who helped set up the foundation. “It’s not a set programme.”
She says: “Some people have post-traumatic stress disorder, some come in with depression, some come with anxiety – it changes.
“We used to have a psychologist in the early days when we first started, but now all we have is a full-time counsellor who knows the girls, who has been with them throughout.”
Akilu initially envisioned Lafiya Sarari as a model of reconciliation, where children of victims, perpetrators and the security forces could receive education together.
But the conflict disrupted education, leaving gaps in learning for children too old for traditional primary school classes. “I didn’t even know ‘ABC’ when I came here,” says Usman, who enrolled aged 12.
The selection process involved interviewing girls aged between 11 and 14 from displaced communities and in refugee camps. “We selected girls who were tenacious and could become something because this was going to be quite a long project.
“Quite a few of the girls had come out of captivity at the time, so some of them were really in a bad state [and] needed trauma support. That was also one of the criteria because we could give them long-term treatment,” says Akilu.
Funding for the ongoing pilot programme for 100 girls came from a grant by the US Catena Foundation. Initially, the students learned together, but as they progressed they were streamed by academic achievement. Thirty pupils have successfully passed national exams and are preparing for university this year.
It is a far cry from how they arrived, fearful and distrustful. They struggled to interact or form friendships with other children and often resorted to violence at the slightest provocation. “They only knew how to fight,” says Yakubu Gwadeda, the deputy headteacher.
“They didn’t know how to interact with each other peacefully, how to queue,” he says.
Those who had been involved with Boko Haram, like Hassana, used to try to intimidate their peers with the threat of violence.
“They went through intervention sessions, coping, resilience, expressive therapy,” says the school counsellor, Hauwa Abdullahi Zaifada. “Some could not talk about their experience but we got to hear their stories through drawings and music.
“Sometimes,” she adds, “they would come to the sessions and not say a word, and we would have to reschedule.”
One of Zaifada’s primary goals was to overcome Boko Haram’s indoctrination against education. She found an opportunity when several girls spoke of their desire for revenge against those who had killed their parents or exploited them.
“I told them that you don’t have to be a soldier or hold a gun for revenge,” Zaifada says. “Education can be their revenge.
“They realised that education is valuable and can help them. That’s how they started picking up in school and doing well.”
Falmata Mohammed Talba, 20, found the daily therapy at school so beneficial that she began replicating the sessions with her two brothers, who attend a government-run school.
She helped them cope with the trauma they collectively experienced after witnessing their father’s murder by Boko Haram and then being held captive with their mother.
“When I first started, I used to see her one-on-one almost every day for about six months. Sometimes, I would even run out of the class. Talking to the psychologist helped me a lot,” Talba says.
“I helped my brothers the way Lafiya Sarari helped me. I tell my brothers, ‘This is what they told me. Why don’t you too start practising it?’ That’s how they changed.”
Talba says she and her brothers can now openly discuss their father without succumbing to tears or anger. “We now say, ‘Remember this when we were with Dad’, and we can laugh,” she says.
Hassana’s psychological progress has been notable, even though her academic advancement has been slower than that of some of her peers. She still relies on an interpreter to express herself in English.
“My relatives were so worried about my behaviour that whenever I started acting out, they would start shouting out passages of the Qur’an to calm me down,” she says. “But all that has stopped. The nightmares have also stopped.”
Seven years after the launch of Lafiya Sarari, Zaifada still has daily sessions with her students.
“Now I don’t have to look for them. They come to me if they have any issues,” she says. “Most of the issues now are environmental – peer-group influences, family issues.”
As for Usman, the crying has stopped. She smiles broadly as she shares her aspirations of winning a scholarship to study law at Cambridge University.
“I hear it is a good school,” she says.
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, The Guardian
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Located in the crowded megacity of Lagos, Nigeria's commercial capital, the Shadow Rage Room offers 20-minute sessions for 7,500 naira ($8.93).
Banjoko Babajide James, a co-founder, said the idea for the rage room came from the rising mental health crisis in Nigeria which is "a taboo topic" to discuss openly.
"We want to create a community of like minds, to make people to understand that this thing is real and we are going to try to push it out," he said.
Patrons are outfitted in protective gear, a baseball bat and a selection of items to break, including glass cups and plates, electronics, and furniture.
The room has been a hit with Lagosians, who have been flocking to release the stress of the country's soaring cost of living, disputed presidential election, and widespread insecurity.
"I was really angry," said Nancy Igwe, a customer, after her session. "Living in Lagos, it is terrible, it is frustrating when you see that the prices of everything has increased."
Anita Christian, another customer, said she came to the rage room after losing a friend.
"I had to come and vent because when you don’t get clarity or closure it is really sad," she said.
While the room has been well-received, James acknowledges that not everyone understands the concept.
"The perception people get when they encounter the rage room is a place where we are promoting anger," he said. "We always try to explain that we are not doing that."
By Angela Ukomadu, Reuters
Video - Salsa teacher helps to dance the blues away in Nigeria
Nigerian woman creates country's first mental health helpline
In Nigeria, the power of dance is being used to battle mental illness and the stigma attached to it. Men and women in the capital, Abuja, are coming together to attend free weekly salsa lessons for those battling trauma and depression … or even just to keep fit. Al Jazeera’s Michael Appel reports.
In February of 2016, Hauwa Ojeifo considered taking her own life. She had spent a significant part of her teenage and early adult life years battling symptoms such as mood swings, bouts of exhaustion, fainting spells and difficulty recollecting daily events.
She told CNN that growing up, there were days she could not get out of bed to carry out mundane activities like brushing her teeth.
At the time, she did not realize she was experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder, a mental health condition where a person's mood swings from high and overactive to low and dull.
"There were a lot of things leading to that moment where I thought about dying. I had an abusive relationship -- well, I can't call it a relationship now because I was like 14 or 15 at the time. But he used to punch me, beat me and gaslight me," Ojeifo explained.
She added that she was sexually abused in 2014 and did not know how to express being raped by a trusted partner to the people around her.
Her experiences, she said, piled up till she eventually snapped and started nursing suicidal notions.
"Trying to explain what was going on in my head was difficult. I looked fine physically, but it started to affect me mentally. I could go a day without being able to construct sentences, and I was a research analyst at the time which meant I had to write daily reports but I couldn't," she said.
After expressing her suicidal thoughts to a friend, she was encouraged to see a psychiatrist at a psychiatric hospital in Lagos, one of Nigeria's largest cities.
She was diagnosed with Bipolar and post traumatic stress disorder with mild psychosis. "I poured out my heart, got some tests done and eventually got a diagnosis."
Creating awareness
Two months after Ojeifo's diagnosis, she said she decided to turn her difficult experiences around. She started to create awareness on the far-reaching impacts of mental health in Nigeria.
In April 2016, she created She Writes Woman, a non-profit organization focused on providing mental health support for those who may need it in the west African nation.
There is minimal mental health awareness and there are not enough mental health professionals in Nigeria.
In a country of more than 200 million people, there are only 250 practicing psychiatrists, according to the Association of Psychiatrists of Nigeria.
Ojeifo told CNN that She Writes Woman started as a blog but she realized she could do more with it, "At first, I was just using it as an outlet to share my experiences and that of other women," she explained.
Eventually, it morphed into a support community for people with mental health conditions.
The 28-year-old got trained as a mental health coach so that she could start a helpline to talk to people experiencing overwhelming mental health symptoms.
"From sharing stories on the blog and social media, She Writes Woman blew up into a helpline which was run by me for a while, and then to a support group for people in vulnerable conditions," she said.
24-hour mental health helpline
She Writes Woman provides a 24-hour mental health helpline for anyone within Nigeria.
The helpline serves as a first point of contact for people in distress or those who just want to talk about their mental health and symptoms.
"People call the helpline to get what we call a first-aid treatment. On the call you don't get immediate professional counseling, what happens is you get a first response communication where someone listens to you and what you have to say," Ojeifo explained.
She added that after the first responders, callers can be referred to mental health professionals for therapy or a diagnosis if needed, "depending on what the issue is we que people in to either a therapist or a psychiatrist."
Data on mental health in Nigeria is hard to find, but according to a 2016 report in the Annals of Nigerian Medicine journal, an estimated 20-30% of the country's population is suffering from mental disorders.
And in 2017, a World Health Organization report found that Nigerians have the highest incidences of depression in Africa, with more than 7 million people in the country suffering from depression.
Despite the numbers, there is an absence of effective mental health legislation setting standards for psychiatric treatment or encouraging mental health awareness in the country.
In February, following deliberations by legislators to pass a proposed mental health bill, Ojeifo became the first person to testify before the Nigerian parliament on the rights of persons with mental health conditions in the country.
The bill has yet to be implemented.
To close the mental health gap in Nigeria, Ojeifo's organization also offers a support group for women and girls called Safe Place in six Nigerian states.
"Safe Space provides a community of shared experiences for women and girls. It provides a space for women to connect and share their experiences on whatever topic, to be there for one another and understand that they are not alone in their journeys," she explained, estimating that there have been over 50 meetings of the support group since the inception of the organization.
In the beginning, Ojeifo, a former investment banker, self-funded the organization.
But now, with donations and grants from organizations such as One Young World, Airtel Nigeria and Disability Rights Advocacy Fund, it is able to expand and carry out more activities in Nigeria's mental health space.
In 2018, the activist received a Queen's Young Leaders Award in in recognition of her work with the 24-hour mental health helpline and Safe Space support group.
Changemaker Award Winner
On Tuesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation named Ojeifo as its Changemaker Award winner for 2020 for her work with She Writes Woman.
The Changemaker Award is one of the Goalkeepers Global Goals Awards pushed yearly by the foundation. It celebrates individuals who have inspired change from a position of leadership or using their personal experience.
In a statement released Tuesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it recognized the activist for her work in promoting Gender Equality, the fifth global goal for sustainable development prescribed by the United Nations.
Ojeifo said that she was in "disbelief" when she first received the email alerting her that she was a recipient of the award.
"It was so unexpected and it came as a surprise because I was not expecting it. It's like an added validation to the work She Writes Woman does," she said.
"During one of the meetings with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation I asked them how I was selected because I was just so blown away. I was told that it was because I had used my personal experience to build hope for people and to drive change," she added.
Through the 2020 Changemaker Award, Ojeifo is hoping to gather a network that will help amplify the work She Writes Woman does even more.
"The Changemaker award means I am part of this network that is dedicated to amplifying my cause and giving me visibility," she said.
By Aisha Salaudeen
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An international rights group has called the Nigerian government to ban chaining as it condemned the "terrible" abuse faced by thousands of people with mental health conditions across the country.