By Adeyinka Adeniran
A Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Ibadan, Olayinka Omigbodun has urged Nigerians to see their neighbours as their brothers who deserve support, care and attention.
Noting that, the current economic hardship is telling on people in different ways, she enjoined the people to give little bit more support to one another, noting that efforts like that will fo a long way in tackling psychosocial disabilities in many people.
Omigbodun who is the current Provost, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan (CoMUI) gave the advice shortly after the presentation of stage play to engage the community and local stakeholders on some of the findings from the SUCCEED Africa Project.
SUCCEED stands for Support Comprehensive Care and EmpowErment for people living with Psychosocial Disabilites.
According to Omigbodun who is the Principal investigator of the project, many people have become suddenly irrational and have developed changed behavioural pattern and attitude at home and in the workplace due to hardship but that with little support and encouragement from people nearby, such psychosocial disabilities could be permanently addressed.
She said “You know everybody has a breaking point. So what I want us to see as Nigerians is that we should be one another’s keeper. These are difficult time, if you have a little bit more, look for somebody to support, that’s what I have been trying to practice, if I notice my neighbour or somebody does not have, you can’t be living in your house and eating and people are hungry, so look for people to support.
“And then, if people are aggressive or they are irritable, find out, like in the office, maybe they don’t have money to go home, maybe they don’t have food to eat, they don’t know where the next meal is coming from, so I think for now we need to be our brother’s keeper.
“We need to support one another, we need to be patient more than ever before because people are going through difficult times, really difficult times.
“Unfortunately, in places like UK they have what they call food banks, social welfare, you can go and collect little money from places like that, we don’t have that. But we have other social welfare systems. We are the social welfare, our churches, our mosques, where people can go collect something and support one another. I believe this season will pass so that’s my view.”
Speaking on the project, she said the goal is to identify the needs of persons with Psychosocial disabilites and the best ways to intervene and improve their lives,
adding that through co-production, the project seeks to develop and design a comprehensive package of care that will help people with psychosocial disabilities.
She explained that, during the four your plan, people with lived experience of psychosis, severe mental illness were involved so as to give real life experience as to how to develop the comprehensive care.
She said “It’s four study countries in Africa including: Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Malawi and Zimbabwe. We have our coordinating partner in the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in the United Kingdom.
“This study is called SUCCEED Africa and it is funded by the FCDO. It’s United Kingdom government arm funding this program. SUCCEED stands for Support Comprehensive Care and EmpowErment for people living with Psychosocial Disabilites.
“One of the things and central to this program is what we call co-production, that is, we are trying to design a comprehensive package of care that will help people with psychosocial disabilities that the people with lived experience of psychosis, severe mental illness for low and middle income countries and we’re working with what we call co-production.
“What co-production means is that right from the onset, working with us, partners equal partners, we have people who have experienced psychosis themselves, people who have been managed for psychosis, people who are on medication and receiving care, so we are working as partners to develop this comprehensive program for people with lived experience and that’s the best way I discovered because I have been in psychiatry since 1987.
“But in the last 4 years when we started this grant my eyes have been opened to what we call co-production and on this grant we have three main arms, including the research arm, capacity building arm and communication and research uptake arm.”
