[World Mental Health Day] EXCLUSIVE: Mental illness – Types, symptoms, misconceptions and treatments – Dr Oyekanmi

Yesterday, (Tuesday) October 10, 2023, was World Mental Health Day. It is an international day for global mental health education, awareness and advocacy against social stigma. It was first celebrated in 1992 at the initiative of the World Federation for Mental Health, a global mental health organization with members and contacts in more than 150 countries. 

To commemorate the World Mental Health Day, NewsClick Nigeria had an exclusive chat with leading Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr (Mrs) Aina Oyekanmi. She practices Psychiatry at the WHO certified Nuero-Psychiatric Hospital, Aro Abeokuta.

In this chat with NewsClick Nigeria, the highly experienced medical consultant dissected in bits and to the layman’s knowledge everything worth knowing from Mental Health to the illness, types, symptoms and how Nollywood movies and some clerics add to the burdens of victims, particularly here in Nigeria.

What does Mental Health means?

Explaining in holistic terms what Mental health mean, Dr Oyekanmi said: “Mental health is a topic that a lot of people don’t understand. There’s a lot of misconceptions about Mental Health. Now, when you say Mental Health, let me take it one by one. Mental means the mind. In medicine, we have technical terms for all the organs of the body. For the liver, we’ll say hepatic, for the heart will say cardiac, for the bones we say Osteo, for the eyes rule says ophthalmology, for the kidneys we say renal, so when we say mental. The clarification became necessary, because a lot of people think that mental means madness. Mental doesn’t mean madness; it simply refers to the mind.

“So, when you say Mental Health, we are talking about the health of the mind, that is mind health. Just as we used to say cardiac health, we are talking about the health of your heart. If you say renal health, we are talking about the health of the kidney.

“Where is the mind? A lot of times people think that the mind is located outside of our bodies, that’s not correct. The mind is in our brain. So, the brain is the organ of the mind. And the brain is inside our heads. So, it is your brain that controls your thoughts, emotions and your behaviour. So Mental Health simply refers to the action of your mind, in terms of your thoughts, your feelings, and your behavior that helps you to be able to enjoy life, to cope with challenges, to deal with different challenges that come your way, to be productive, to contribute meaningfully to the society to live a meaningful life, that is what Mental Health is all about.”

Types of mental illnesses

The veteran Psychiatrist explained that mental illnesses are not just physical as in the case of someone displaying acts of lunacy.

“There are many types of mental illness. When people think about mental illness, they think is only about those people that walk naked on the street, that hoard rubbish or pick rubbish from the ground or talk things that people do not understand. That’s not the only type of mental illness we have. In fact, that one is just an extreme case. A very extreme type of mental illness.

“We have different categories of mental illness. Mental illness can affect the thought, can affect emotions, and it can affect our behavior. I will mention some common ones. The two most common types are depression and anxiety disorder. They are very, very, very common. And a lot of time, a lot of people suffer from these disorders, and they don’t even know what it is. Other types of mental illnesses would include things like substance abuse, which many people can call addiction, we also have Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder. Bipolar disorder is a disorder of the mood wherein someone would have two extreme moods. At one point, the person might be too happy, at another point, the person might be too sad. So, it’s like the person choosing between one end of the pole or another.

“Schizophrenia is when there is a breakdown in our thought and affection. Other mental health conditions include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Personality Disorders. But the most common are depression and anxiety disorder. We still have others not mentioned, but these are the most common ones we have.”

Symptoms of mental illness

“Most mental illnesses don’t start in a severe form like most illnesses, for example, Malaria. Most times, Malaria can start with maybe slight headache, and then can progress to a severe case that may warrant being hospitalized. The same thing happens in mental illness. A lot of times, it starts with light symptom, and people ignore, or they don’t even know what it is. Each type of mental illnesses has their own unique symptoms. But there are some common symptoms that you can see in most mental illnesses, things like changes in your appetite and sleep patterns. It could be that the person starts sleeping more or loses appetite. It could be that the person sleeps too much or is not sleeping well. Sometimes, you can wake up in the morning and don’t feel refreshed.

“Another symptom is inability to concentrate. Like finding it so hard to keep your mind on that task. Sometimes, it can manifest as negative emotions like sadness, instability, you know, little things would upset you and people will have to be walking on eggshells around you. It can manifest with despondent mood. It can manifest with anxiety. It can manifest with too much happiness, when somebody is very excited. You know, for example, when somebody has mania. Mania is one end of a bipolar disorder. The person can believe that he owns the world, has a lot of money in the bank, and the person may just be giving out a lot of possession, that’s one type of manifestation. Sometimes it can manifest as social withdrawal. So, it’s somebody who before then like to mingle with people, not just like to do that again. So social withdrawal, can be a symptom of mental illness.

“Sometimes forgetfulness too can be a symptom. So by and large, any change in one’s behaviour, any change in one’s thinking patterns, or any change in one’s emotion can actually be symptoms of mental illness. And I have mentioned the commonest symptoms.  These symptoms usually appear at the onset, but they can progress into what we call delusions and hallucinations. Hallucination is perception without any stimuli. So, for example, somebody might say that he’s hearing voices. He might say that he is hearing voices of people talking to him when actually no one is talking about him. He might say that the birds are calling his name, the trees are talking to him, he might say that the neighbours are discussing about him, and he can hear them.

“Sometimes it can also manifest as delusions. These are abnormal beliefs that are held even when there is evidence to the contrary. For example, a person may say that he is God, and he has the power to do anything.

“Sometimes it can manifest as delusions that some people are out to kill him. The person might even accuse his loved ones of trying to kill him, this is called paranoid delusions.”

Clerics and Nollywood movies not helping matters 

“In this part of the world, we are so religious that we ascribe a lot of things to spirituality.  You can imagine what a person who is mentally ill and his hearing voices or having paranoid delusions taken to clerics or traditionalists will face. As expected, the Pastor, Imam or traditionalist will ascribe the challenges to the handiworks of people from the village trying to kill the person.

“A lot of time because people don’t understand that these are symptoms of mental health, they will now be going from one church to another doing different types of deliverance, believing that people want to kill them. In fact, a lot of times people believe that mental illnesses are afflictions from devil, or that they are caused by demonic possession, or that they are results of some evil the person has done.

“This is also propagated by Nigerian home videos. If you watch an average Nigeria movie, all these Nollywood movies whether its Igbo, Yoruba Hausa or English, they portray mental illness as an affliction for wrongdoing. So, for example, they might say that, oh, this person is mentally ill, because she snatched somebody’s husband. Or they might say that this one became mentally ill because they tried to collect somebody’s money. A lot of times they send wrong messages to the public. When people watch these things, they think that mental illness is a retributive illness and that people that experience mental illnesses must have done something bad, and that is not correct.

“Mental illness can happen to anybody, as long as you have a brain, except you are not a human being. If you have a brain, then you can develop any form of mental illness. Just like anybody can have hypertension, diabetes, cancer, and other serious ailments. Although we don’t pray for these things, but anybody can have it. So mental illnesses are biological illnesses, they are legitimate illnesses. People should not look down on people with mental illnesses because it could happen to anybody,” she said.