WELCOME!

Hi,

I finally got to writing this welcome piece!This blog is about mental health/Psychiatry.

Mental health or Psychiatry in a branch of medicine that is poorly understood by both the average medical doctor and worse,the average man on the street.

The reason is not far fetched.What people dont understand,they tend to scorn.It takes a bit of an extra effort to talk to mentally ill people and to make diagnosis.After all, what you are doing is to use the mind to explore and understand the mind which is really not an easy thing to do.Moreover a couple of people in my country still largely think of psychiatry in terms of the vagrant psychotic roaming about the street naked,constituting a nuisance to the society.

In my country of so many tribes and ethnic groups ,myths surrounding mental illness is as diverse as the number of ethnic groups!There is a need to educate the people of the nature of mental illness and the management modalities available.

It is a known fact that Mental health is one of the component of the Primary health care of Nigeria.But be that as it may,little or no impact is being made at this level of our health care.Most of the psychiatric services are limited to only the tertiary centres and the number of Psychiatrists are few.

However the burden of mental disorders on the patient,relatives and the society is immense.Prof Gureje noted in the Bulletin of the W.H.O vol 78 no 4 that mental disorders are among the ten top causes of disability in Africa and that their contribution to the overall burden of diseases in Africa is going to rise.It therefore behooves us to preempt this and to make sure that mental health education and advocacy is at the disposal of our people.

This blog may at the same time serve at the diary of my first hand experience in mental health as I pursue my fellowship programme in Psychiatry.

Here is the link to the bulletin ot the W.H.O written by Prof Gureje.
www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S0042-96862000000400009&script=sci_arttext&tlng=