On this Sunday afternoon in the month of May, there is a gathering in one of the smaller function rooms of the swank Oriental Hotel, Lagos. It is to celebrate the World Maternal Mental Health Day, a feature that is beginning more and more to claim a space for itself in the calendar of international celebrations observed by people who pay attention to the pursuit of worthy causes.
You have been invited to this event by Kachi, a bright young Psychologist who works with you. He runs an NGO named PSN Africa, which screens pregnant women and new mothers for evidence of mental disorder, using an instrument known as Edinburgh Post-Natal Depression Scale. You have a strange fondness for that instrument, perhaps because it was developed in Edinburgh around the time you were there by your old teacher – John Cox, with whom you had a falling out of sorts.
The World Maternal Mental Health Day is actually a week- long set of activities designed to raise awareness of the fact that women around the time of childbirth suffer in large numbers – up to one in five, by some estimations, from a constellation of mental health syndromes ranging from anxiety to depression and, in a few cases, psychotic illness. The movement arose from the deliberations of a small group of women from various countries who came together in 2015 to start making plans for a day close to the annual Mother’s Day to draw public attention to this common scourge of their gender, about which there seemed to have been a conspiracy of silence for so long. They settled on the first Wednesday of May every year, and have marked the day annually since 2016.
The key messages to be pushed into public glare are the following:
- Maternal Mental Health Matters; #maternalMHmatters
- Women, their family and friends, need to know the symptoms of maternal mental ill health, and be aware that they are not alone
- Help and support – medical, social, family, should be made available promptly
The crowd at the Oriental hotel event are a motley group of Nollywood stars and wannabees, bloggers and social media figures, female executives who run their own businesses, and other clearly upwardly mobile young people, mostly female. Many are avowedly feminist, from their tone.
The programme consists of a series of panel discussions on different aspects of the topic, invariably from the angle of personal experience. The speakers, like the audience, are mostly accomplished and ambitious young women. Each speaks freely, sometimes emotionally, about a personal experience of depression or one of the other problems around the time of childbirth. Almost invariably, they had not received prompt recognition and assistance from medical staff and family, many of whom were not even themselves aware of the existence of such problems as valid illness entities.
Dr Femi Omololu, an Obstetrician from Island Maternity Hospital in town, is invited to take the microphone and speak about ‘What the government is doing’. He explains that efforts are being made in his hospital to get the medical staff to recognize people with Perinatal Mental Health problems, and to support and treat them, using the services of mental health specialists where necessary.
The general trend of the contributions is that women need to speak out more for themselves. The struggle for awareness, recognition and care for maternal mental health conditions has become part of the general struggle for the advancement of the rights of women in Nigerian society.
It is interesting,indeed, watching a mental health subject being discussed by what professionals would call a ‘user’ group. There has been a movement in recent decades to feature the voices of people who have actually suffered from mental health problems in any discussions on such problems, instead of listening only to the voices of ‘experts’. Cultural taboos and stigma have often held people back from open admission or discussion of the subject. But here are these young Nigerian ladies, letting it all hang out, talking freely about how they suffered, and how they recovered and got their lives back. It is almost like saying, defiantly, ‘Look at me now!’.
‘…I couldn’t even touch my baby. I was afraid I would kill her…’
‘…The baby’s cries drove me nuts. I would hide my head under a pillow, crying my eyes out…’
‘…I couldn’t step out of the house. I was so afraid…’
It is testimony to how far young Nigerians have gone in getting rid of the old invisible chains that held them back, and in claiming the freedom to talk about their lives,warts and all, and demand action from society.
At the end of it Kachi insists you must say a word.
What can you say, you ask?
You proceed to answer your own question.It is good that these things are being dragged out of the woodwork, you say. They are illnesses, and while some will disappear spontaneously over time, many will not. Many will need expert treatment, not just sympathy. Kachi’s NGO, with its limited funding and its enthusiastic volunteers, only does screening, going from place to place to screen and identify mothers who are suffering. They cannot refer the sick for treatment because most of them are too poor to pay for the treatment they need.
You are careful to explain that you are not dousing the enthusiasm of the young Wakanda warriors before you – in fact you are applauding their energy. However, you are letting them know they have to push their boundary from helping to recognize, to helping to treat, by making the appropriate linkages, by mobilizing funds, and, yes, by raising a din in the ear of government and the general public.
There is a delicately packaged assortment of small chops in the take-away bag shared to the audience. It is probably done by one of the ladies in the room, you reflect, as you hurry out to catch up with the rest of your Sunday.
Femi Olugbile
