re children immune to mental illness? Does the society understand that when children are belligerent, they are trying to register their displeasure with certain things?
According to a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Dr Ibironke Annette Amodu, society does not pay attention to children mental illeness because it assumes they do not experience it.
Dr Amodu said most children do not receive treatment because of the way the society perceives their condition.
For instance, nine-year-old Michael Eze lost his father in an auto-crash. He was devastated, so was his mother. The behaviour of his extended family that came to take possession of his father’s house and business did not help matters. Though his mother tried to stop them, but after much plea with the family members without any success, she resigned to fate
But determined to give her two children- a boy and a girl good education, she sent them to her sister. Their maternal aunt added to the children’s agony as she was always abusing them. This made them sad. Sometimes, she would ask them to hawk bread before going to school in the morning. She put them in a public school whereas they were hitherto attending a private school.
This drastic change in life did not go down well with the children who could be have being born with a silver spoon.
Michael joined a gang and started taking drugs, such as Marijuana and heroine. His sister took to prostitution. The children turned out to be the opposite of what their parents planned for them.
To Dr Amodu, who worked with children and adolescents with emotional, behavioral and learning disabilities for almost two decades, “the frustration encountered by the duo drove them to the underworld, where they vented their anger, found solace in the ills they were involved in and their counterparts. Meanwhile, the society will see them as miscreants, disturbing the peace of everybody”.
She said these children are not mad; rather they are using their behaviour to communicate how they feel within.
Those are not the only way childhood and adolescent psychiatry occur, they encompass behaviour disorders, autism, psychotic illness and learning disability, among others.
Dr Amodu cited how child mental health can be stimulated unintentionally: Mrs Toke (surname withheld) loved her husband of 18 years passionately but did not have her affection reciprocated. The husband was having extra marital affairs, to the point of bringing his mistresses home. Thinking another pregnancy would endear her husband to her, she took in. But her husband flared up on this and would always beat her. Mrs Toke found comfort in alcohol and smoking.
She gave birth to her child during this period. Ola, as her son is called, was affected and had mental challenges at a young age. He did not develop like children of his age.
Dr Amodu said this is a clear case of error with resultant effects. “Also, sickle cell, asthma, diabetes, seizures and epilepsy all have a way of gingering mental illness in children. There are also learning disabilities among children that are backward academically, otherwise called dullards, known as olodo in Yoruba”, she said.
She said in Nigeria, it is taken for granted that children do not have emotional trauma thinking wrongly that this obtains only in the Western world. “The illness is not limited to the Western world, for example, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorders are also present in children in Nigeria.
“In the United Kingdom, one in 100 children has autism disorder while attention deficit disorder is four out of 100. But, here in Nigeria when such children apparently display, they are seen as naughty children and so they get beaten,” she said.
To find a sustainable solution to child mental illness, Dr Amodu said more professionals should specialise in it, “this area of specialty is not so common because psychiatrists must sub-specialise to be able to attend to children living with these conditions.
“Childhood psychiatry is about children with behaviour disorders, for example, children with autism and those seen as having “naughty” behaviours. Also, children who have psychotic illness, or those depressed early in life and end up with a condition called schizophrenia; children with drug-related problems.”
A consultant psychiatrist, Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital (FNPH), Yaba, Lagos, Dr Olugbenga Owoeye, corroborated his colleague that mental illness is no respecter of age or creed. But more young people are now having mental problems because of their population.
Dr Owoeye said: “Mental illness is any clinical condition characterised with psychological disturbance, such as disturbances of thinking, emotion, memory and behaviour. That is, it’s severe enough to cause pain or distress either to the person who is having the condition or to those around him. It is also associated with impairment in the ability of the person to function socially and occupationally.”
Mental illness, he said, is a psychological disturbance which causes distress to the sufferer or those who live around him. “It could cause impairment in social and occupational functioning of that individual,” he said.
Owoeye said the facilities and personnel to handle the illness are grossly inadequate in terms of number, adding that Nigeria presently has eight neuro-psychiatric hospitals spread across the six geo-political zones.
He said there are about 200 consultant psychiatrists in the country to take care of the country’s population of 160 million people, adding: “I doubt if clinical psychologists are not up to 100.
“There are few neuro-psychiatric hospitals where patients get serious treatment; they only receive treatment at units and departments at teaching hospitals or general hospitals”.
The country, he said, lacked capacity in psychiatric nursing, occupational therapy and social workers.
“This set of workers are involved in the integration of the mentally ill and their re-integration back into the community. However, they are few,” he added.
The Federal Government, he said, should establish a neuro-psychiatric hospital in each state, adding that it should focus on mental health, specifically in the training and retraining of personnel locally and internationally.
The consultant psychiatrist identified predisposing, precipitating and perpetrating factors as things that help the illness, saying one or two may be operating at a time. Pre-disposing factors, he said: are factors that operate earlier in the life of an individual and appear to cause mental illness later in life. This happens during pregnancy, especially when the mother is malnourished or suffer from infection or she is traumatised due to a fall during pregnancy, Owoeye said.
This, he said can have effect on the brain of the baby which is developing in the womb.
He said: “The second is that there are factors operating around the time of delivery. Where a baby is delivered is important; is it in the village or at home, or where there are no experts to take care of the baby? All can lead to trauma and cause infection to the baby. Some babies may have birth asphyxia, which may have stress on the brain later in life.
“The baby may develop jaundice or childhood infection. It may become malnourished, underweight or undergrowth.
“If a woman suffers a problem such as child abuse, either physical or sexual while she was younger, when there is exposure to trauma”.
Precipitating factors, he said, are factors which appear to be responsible for the development of mental illness as at the time the illness started.
This can be due to infection, trauma, head injury, road traffic accident and drugs, he said.
Other causes are psychiatric drugs such as Indian hemp, alcohol, nicotine, tobacco and cocaine, and heroine.
