Experts Advocate Mental Health Awareness At Primary School Level
AREWA AGENDA – Experts have stressed the need for proper health education from the primary school level in revalidating the concerns and misconception about mental health issues in the country.
Speaking with LEADERSHIP Sunday on the need to change the false narrative and ensure that Nigerians are more aware about the state of their mental health a mental health consultant and founder, My Beautiful Mind, Ms Nifemi Sowole, said, “To help change the narrative is to have an inclusive mental health awareness and emotional stability effect right from the primary education, where proper learning should be given at those formative years of a child.
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“From there they can begin to understand why their emotional health matters and therefore become more inclusive and interested in their mental wellbeing, so that when they grow up to become adults they will recognise that their emotions and mental health is important with parents and teachers paying attention to their little or simple emotions such as sadness, anger, happiness, fear, and identifying that these are the symptoms strictly looked out for before thinking of the extreme disorders like schizophrenia among others.”
Also speaking to LEADERSHIP Sunday, a lecturer and clinical psychologist at the Department of Psychiatry, College of Health Sciences, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH), Dr Oluwafisayo Adebimpe, emphasised the need for relevant stakeholders mostly mental health experts to intervene in the interest of the society at large.
Oluwafisayo who canvassed for introduction of mental health education in the curriculum stressed that the society at large must not keep mute about the problem but rather engage in public awareness via public and private organisations, at the primary, secondary and tertiary institutions, among others.
BY DUSTAN AGHEDO, Lagos
Arewa Agenda is a publication of young writers and journalists from Northern Nigeria geared towards peaceful coexistence and national development through positive narratives.
