Yale University to strengthen mental health education in Nigeria

Yale University, United States, has restated commitment to help Nigeria and other African countries to strengthen their mental health care systems to meet world’s best practices.

It also indicated readiness to contribute meaningfully through collaboration with relevant institutions in the study and preservation of African languages.

Yale University is 319 years old and the third oldest in the United States.

The president of the university, Professor Peter Salovey, gave the assurance in Lagos while addressing newsmen on the university’s ongoing efforts on its ‘Happiness Project’ – the health action for psychiatric problems – and other programmes under its Africa Initiative projects in Nigeria.

According to Salovey, the university’s efforts in this regards is worthwhile not only because many Nigerians with mental health challenges cannot access simple and effective care but also because of the huge implications of psychiatric conditions on Nigeria’s socio-economic development and its prime position in African economy.

Salovey noted that the university had already started the ‘Happiness Project’ in Nigeria by partnering the Imo State University Teaching Hospital. The project is being supported by the Yale Global Mental Health Programme, CBM International, and the Imo State Primary Health Care Development Agency.

The Yale University president, who was on a four-day working visit to Nigeria last week, explained that the team of psychiatrists from the university led by two Nigerians –Thaddeus Iheanacho and Charles Dike – would oversee the training of primary healthcare workers from cities down to the rural communities on the effective ways to screen and manage people with mental disorders, including epilepsy and substances.

Salovey, a professor of psychology and 23rd president of Yale, said this action would increase significantly the access of Nigerians to effective, evidence-based treatments for mental and neurological disorders especially in underserved areas of Nigeria, using technology and existing care infrastructure.

Shedding light on the project, Theddeus Iheanacho and his Nigerian colleague- Charles Dike, both associate professors at the university, re-emphasised that truly there was a need to help Nigeria and other African countries to tackle mental health problems confronting the continent.

They noted that they were surprised to see, for example, that only one full-time psychiatrist is in the whole of Imo State serving about five million residents, while there is no single psychiatric hospital.