Tag: World Mental Health Day

  • 2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression, possession (2)

    2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression, possession (2)

    From the newspapers, radio, television and social media last week, it would appear that more Nigerians would suffer from mental health challenges, especially from Depression and Possession, in the coming years. Last week ( October 23, 2025) , we heard that no fewer than one in four or five Nigerians were no longer thinking straight. It was all part of the assesment of the mental health report of Nigerians estimated population of 220 million in which about 50 million or more could be down. The world’s brain doctors on October 10, 2025 reviewed their work and achievements in the past year. Last week, this column said there had been no paradigm shift in their conceptions of the brain and how it works. Nor have they been able to come up with better ways of treating brain troubles outside Anti-Depressantionant Drugs which often dehumanise their patients and make vegetable humans of many of them for life.

    The sky-line of mental health in Nigeria looks dimmer with reports that six governors of the South Western states planned to meet over information that primary school children were now using all sorts of hard drugs. The reports were followed by a call from the National Association of Nigerian Students(NANS), which covers the country’s 301 universities, that students be tested for drug use before they were enrolled or graduated. Additionally, education policy makers have agreed that mental health education be included in school curriculums at all levels of schooling. Just when I thought we could have some reprieve from the bad news, there were reports that drug pushers were fleeing from their dens being combed by the NDLEA and using the kiosks of petty trade mallams to circulate substances.

    READ ALSO: PDP Senator defects to APC, cites ‘Leaking Umbrella’, internal crisis

    Begun last week (23 October 2025), comments of this column on the present state of treating depression and possession in Nigerian hospitals is a widow’s mite contribution to help persons challenged with mental health problems by giving their doctors hints of what else they may add to the present treatment regimen. Its approach is from the stand point of Natural Medicine and the perspective that neither drugs but the right kinds of food and drinks bring lasting health. In particular, it revisits a teaching in the 1920s and 1930s that recomposition of the blood will heal brain problems, especially depression and possesion, to which are chained a long train of behaviour imbalances…

    Mystery of the blood

    In these matters, I am incorrigibly optimistic that the right foods and drinks can clear up such dysfunctions of the brain. The incorrigibility is founded on the propositions of a Wise One in the 1920s and 1930s which may have advanced and humanised psychiatry had the practitioners not remained tenaciously hooked on drug and injection therapies. The Wise One presented the propositions in a series of public lectures. Some of them were…Motion, The Physical Body, The Mystery of The Blood, The Mystery of Birth, Temperament and The Significance of Man’s Generative Power. The knowledge they bear is ever expansive as it unfolds with the growing maturity of the human soul, (nay )spirit. so I can only attempt as follows, a summary based on my understanding…

    1) Man, that is you and I, are not our bodies but another existent consistency which inhabits these physical bodies, the human spirit or the scriptural breath of life. Look at a mirror, and ask yourself if the physical body you are looking at is the real you. If you think the physical body is the real  you, ask yourself: Why do I say this is my body, these are my eyes, these are my fingers…those parts of the body that I own? Were we not taught all that in primary school? At the age of 24, I had an incitive experience. My younger brother slept beside me in bed. I came out of my body, which I saw lying beside him. I saw myself existing in another body that was not my earthly body. In that second or non earthly body, I was confronting a man in the same type of body who was trying to reach my body in bed. I recognise that was a period in my life when I fed my body with all sorts of rubbish which could have denatured my blood composition and radiation, made them unusable for me to control my body but made them usable by a lower and malicious person who probably had designs on the quietly sleeping body.

    2) The physical bodies are lifeless on their own, and merely animated by the inhabiting or in-dwelling different consistency, the human Spirit.

    3) The other consistency is spirit or, in the language better understood, Soul

    4) The spirit is a traveller on earth for a task, like an astronaut on the moon for a purpose.

    5) Like the astronaut who needs a special garment for the different nature of the moon, the spirit needs a garment on earth, the physical body.

    6) On earth, the body is a tool or servant of the spirit which uses it as a motorist uses a motorcar. As the motorist learns to maintain the car and to control it, the spirit must care for and control his or her physical body.

    7) Many persons do not care for their physical bodies or control them. Only when they have problems with them do they remember to. Besides, they exercise no control over their bodies.

    8) Evidence of the lack of control is the manner many persons walk. They walk not in a straight movement, but in wavy motions. The steps are often heavy, ponderous , bobling or stumpy , and their movements are everything but beautiful and graceful , like an animal’s.

    9) The lack of control occurs because the spirit cannot connect with the body through the blood.

    10) In the Natural Design of the body, there are

    A) The frontal brain or cerebrum, seat of the intellect and B) The back brain or cerebellum, the spiritually receptive brain.The inhabitant of the body, the spirit, is meant to connect with its origin as the astronaut connects with earth, in the case of the spirit through intuitive radiations before it takes any action on earth. Whatever guidance is given is expressed by the spirit on the back brain, the cerebellum or the spiritual brain. The impression comes in pictorial messages, such as the ones received in dreams. That is why it is often said of dreams: The Lord gives to his own in  their dreams. Let us remember the dream of the Egyptian Pharoah, the interpretation by detainee Joseph and the action the frontal brain or intellect took therefrom. From the cerebellum, the images are rapidly transported through the blood radiation to the Solar Plexus and, from there, via blood radiation again, to the front brain, the cerebrum. This brain decodes the images, fashions them into thought, words, (spoken or written) activates muscles.

    11) In many persons, this process is haphazard. That explains why dreams may not be well remembered. From the outside, the reverse process informs The inhabitant of what is going on which can be forwarded by the spirit to the helpers and guides for advise as earlier stated. This process, which occurs faster than the speed of light, has become hazardous from the blood composition. If the blood is not well composed, its radiation will be dull and will not provide the spirit effective bridge to the brains and to the body, and from the body back to the spirit via the brains.This is one of the causes of Autism. The in-dwelling spirit is aware of its environment and wishes to connect with it and to impact it but has been hindered by a lack of appropriate bridge to the body through the blood radiation.

    12) The blood radiation is, therefore, also the problem of persons in depression and persons who are possessed.

    13) The series of public lectures of the 1920s and 1930s, which were originally espoused by the Theosophical Society, went beyond these limits. I halt here only to not digress too far.

    14) Evidence in the lecture series that the Spirit forms the blood are that a) the blood in the baby growing in the womb does not begin to circulate until the spirit or soul enters into the body. This is about the middle of pregnancy. b) The entrance or incarnation can be felt in the first kicks of pregnancy c) The blood stops to circulate when death of the body occurs and the spirit withdraws from the body.

    d) Were the spirit not responsible for the formation of the body and blood, both would not be different from those of animals. For the animal bears no spirit as its inhabitant but an animal soul

    15) The Wise One acknowledged the laborious and devoted work of gifted ones whose studies of the secrets of the blood have yielded beneficial results in the various blood groups. But he said the outcomes still scratch the surface, however beneficial they may have been to human health and happiness. Brighter would their paths be, he said, lit by the grateful prayers of their fellow men if they proceeded further to unearth more secrets of the blood. Such new revelations on the threshold of which we stand, would lead to the healing of more diseases hitherto thought incurable because really, there are no sick souls but sick blood and bodies. I believe psychiatrists will eventually recognise existence of the human spirit, as American surgeon Dr. Norman Sheally and intuitive spiritual healer Carolyn Myss ventured in their 1998 book, The Creation of health, which I had the privilege to review at that time for the present Millenium. I believe Dr. Abayomi Aiyesimoju, a neurologist and medical director of Healthville, on Adeniyi Jones Avenue, Lagos, also reviewed the book. He is not an “intellectual” doctor. By “intellectual”, I do not infer that he is not academic or erudite. I mean he has not submitted himself to his intellect in the frontal brain through a disconnection of the spirit from the body described above. In medicine, “intellectuals” are known as Mechanists. They believe only what they can see, hear, smell or touch. They also like to be called Realists. They, therefore, limit themselves to only that knowledge which earthly conceptions of time and space and the intellect can offer. On the other hand, The Vitalists are those doctors and researchers including lay persons like me who believe there is something within the physical body which is of a higher origin and has more potential than the intellect. It is these set of doctors who hold the potential to liberate mankind from the present malaise of blood and brain dysfunctions which impact depression  and possession on an increasing scale.

    16) The lecture series also distinguish between insanity, possession and occurrences of spookish activities. In lunacy, brain cells are damaged. In possession, which is evident in the Split Personality Syndrome, also called Bi Polar personality, an earth-bound human soul has taken over part of the brain or organ of another person, temporarily or permanently to materially manifest. This is possible where the original owner of the physical body has been careless with the composition of his or her blood and the radiation such blood gives off is found useful for earthly manifestation through a physical body by the roaming and invading earth-bound soul. An earth-bound soul is a human person on earth who, after his or her physical demise, does not move away from the earth environment but is attached through propensity or other causes to persons, places or events. The earth-bound soul seeks to manifest its nature in happenings on earth and, in his or her roaming about, may find an earth dweller with a suitable blood radiation which provides a good anchorage. In some alternative medicines and some traditional medicines, such invaders are cast out, but they may return if the protecting agent withdraws, as is seen in the warning The Lord Jesus gave the possessed man he freed of a legion of demons! The best protection and curative, therefore, is the recomposition of the blood to the consistency most suitable for the owner spirit.

    17) The Wise One acknowledged that many factors influence blood composition, but emphasises that, to the spirit concerned belongs the primary responsibility. The doctor, too, has leading role to play, especially if the spirit had become constrained in one way or another. Some of the constraining factors are a) diet b) radiations of the stars and earth in a particular zone of the earth. C) illness d) accidents e) temperament f) age.

    The intervention of the doctor would need to personalise therapies.Therefore, the doctor of this description will have to be rooted in nutrition as he or she is rooted in physiology, anatomy, biochemistry and haematology. Unfortunately, many doctors did not study nutrition in-depth or at all in medical school. Thus, not much is to be expected at this time from the present system of the practice of psychiatry.

    Nigerian psychiatrists may learn a lot from Nigerian Traditional Medicine (NTM). In the 1970s or 1980s, a man picked up so called insane persons on the streets of Lagos, made them live in a commune and healed them. He received no government recognition and the professional medical association looked derisively the other way. His methods were not dehumanising as are found in some of today’s rehabilitation centers. He may have died and taken his healing art with him. We hear reports of healers in Benue and Akwa Ibom states who give afflicted persons special water to drink and they often ask: Where am I and how didi I get here? In so far as these methods are not Hynotic, I believe they are worth being studied by psychiatrists.

    18) Spookish manifestations evidenced in throwing of objects, noise making etc near or in the vicinity of a person does not mean such a person is possessed. His or her blood radiation may only have enhanced such manifestations . In Oshogbo recently, a house owner commited suicide. Some of his tenants relocated to other places immediately. The ones who stuck around needed no prodding to leave when the family buried his remains on the grounds. It was clear he could come to haunt the house and torment the residents. Our people know of these things and address them appropriately.

    Conclusion

    Many ideas converge in respect of the composition of the blood. A spirit disconnected from his or her body leaves that body without control. An earth-bound soul may pick up that body. Two captains may, therefore, exist in the body giving it different instructions thereby producing a split personality. Some persons call this situation depression. Others name it possession. Still others assume erroneously it is lunacy. However, it is not lunacy but possession which is different as well from depression. Space does not suffice to discuss many possible causes of depression, a leading cause of which may be the consumption of naked sugars, chemical flavours, food additives, pesticides and herbicides and, lately genetically modified foods, to mention a few. The body must be detoxified, given high grade nutrition, many foods and drinks must be abandoned, exercise and rest must be serious watch words, negative thoughts must be abandoned and, above all, the spirit must become active within his or her garment.

    By the foregoing, I do not mean that the outward care of the physical body is less important. If I own a car I do not maintain but only look after myself, it would break down some day! The human body is even more than a vehicle for locomotion to the in-dwelling human spirit. The frontal brain(cerebrum) and the back brain (cerebellum) are meant to co-operate in their work far more than science and medicine have recognised today. The human Spirit is connected with its orign through an intuitive faculty. The values and guidance it draws upon from there are pictorially passed to the back brain, the spiritually receptive brain, according to the text of Care of the Physical Body. Thus, for example, the back brain is where inspiration breaks forth and where experiences of the human spirit, when the body goes to rest in sleep, are pictorially recorded as dreams. Whether we have a sharp memory of dreams or if the reception and remembrance are poor reveals how well or otherwise we are maintaining this part of the brain. If we leave it inactive through inner life inactivity it would athrophise from disuse. That is what has happened to humanity through over cultivation of the frontal brain and the intellect through the pressure of formal education and thinking out of the challenges for their situations. We are meant to not primarily be thinking but intuitive persons who, automatically, pass pictorial messages or guidance from the beyond from the back brain to the front brain, seat of the intellect, which fashions it out into earthly responses and actions. This way, there would have been no quastion of the big brain, and the small brain, as we describe the front and back brains respectively today. They would have been the same size, neither dominating the other.

  • 2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression possesion(1)

    2025 World Mental Health Day: Depression possesion(1)

    About 50 million Nigerians are believed to have mental health challenges, going by latest records from this year’s World Mental Health Day celebration on October 10. This is a frightening number because it means about one in every 4 or 5 persons is down upstairs. This number is about 22.73 percent of Nigeria’s 220 million population estimate by the United Nations. The ratio of persons in depression to persons who appear to be in control of themselves is likely to rise, going by assumptions that hospital data may have left out more than 20 percent of challenged persons. Even more worrisome is the observation that healing can be a mirage, that some hospital patients relapse one or two times in one year that more cases of depression are pouring into the wards and that there are not enough doctors and other medical staff, psychologists and psychotherapists to cope with the brimming over. Hospital beds are not guaranteed even in serious emergencies. Boarded patients may be prematurely discharged to pave way for patients with doctor or management connections. The churches and other establishments are coming to the aid of society with rehabilitation centers, but behind their goals is the profit motive. In the rehabilitation centres of the churches, the aim is largely to win souls for Christ. But as we shall see in the unfolding text, their proselytization does not address the root cause of DEPRESSION or POSSESION, which is the need to feed the body with THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOODS AND DRINKS and to RECOMPOSE THE BLOOD for more vibrant energy or radiation that will provide the soul or spirit they are trying to enliven a bridge to the brain and intellect and, therefore, absolute, effective control of the body. I do not wish to speak about the living conditions of some rehabilitation centres. Feeding is poorer than in the prisons or correctional centres, as prisons are now called to give them a human face outdoor, even if they are dehumanising within. I have heard of rehabilitation centres where boarded patients over crowd in rooms, have no bed, matress, mats or cover cloth. In their complexion and physical look, they are like living corpses exhumed from dunghills, almost skeletal and identifiable only by their voices. Between last year and this year, there would appear to be no significant advancement in the frontiers of mental health medicine abroad and in Nigeria. Conceptions or what we know about mental health are still rigid. Psychiatric doctors still prescribe dangerous drugs with terrible side effects, some of which may be life threatening apart from causing cancer. Some of these drugs are fluoxetine, sertraline, citralopram, valporic acid, lithium, lamotrigine, olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, benzodiazepines, alprazolam, Clonazepam and buspirone .

    Space will not permit a discussion of how each one works, or of the negative side effects it introduces into the patient’s health matrix, and the new diseases these side effects impact on the body. There is hardly any patient who does not talk about them, who does not hate them, and who does not struggle to abandon them. That is why cases of relapse are many and, in some situations, followed up with suicide, in the erroneous belief that killing oneself takes away all problems one is fleeing from.

    At a psychiatric hospital in Lagos a few years ago, many of the patients in a male ward sought premature discharge en Bloc. Wise counsel suggested they be allowed to go, perhaps to prevent a violent escape.

    Some side effects of antidepressant drugs are excessive weight gain, slurry tongue, tremors, estrogen dominance in men which causes them to grow breasts, hormonal imbalances which subdue libido and may cause infertility, gastrointestinal issues, syndrome x (large abdominal bulge) which is a risk factor in hypertension, diabetes, liver and kidney disease, heart disease and heart failure and strokes, among others. Thyroid gland and kidney impact cannot be ruled out as well. That means health problems associated with thyroid gland disturbances may occur and, in the case of impacted kidneys, the bone marrow may become unable to produce enough red blood cells causing pernicious anaemia. So are metabolic changes, obesity and other amorphous shapes, drowsiness and sleepiness which can cause vegetable existence, dependence risk, withdrawal symptoms, and lack of competitive spirit, among others.

    Depression, not lunacy

    When many persons are told a neighbour is in hospital for mental health care, all they think about is lunacy. From the government, psychiatrists, parents, politicians, neighbourhood leaders right to the medical lay person in the street, and even persons in depression and the possesed themselves are perplexed about what is going on. Some commentators put it all down to drug or psychotic substance abuse. Others point accusing fingers at a mismanaged economy and poverty and the hurt or injuries they inflict on the mind, since not all cases are outcomes of drug or psychotic substance abuse. I have been aware of this since 1977 during my national youth service in Calabar when I paid my first visit ever to a psychiatric hospital. My NYSC primary assignment included visits to corps members in depression and boarded at the hospital. Since then, I have been close to some families who are distressed by one or more members held down by depression or possesion. Always, I found that, once the ailing persons stabilised on pharmaceutical psychiatry, they fared much better on nutrition psychiatry and psycho therapy. So close am I to many persons and families in these experiences that I will offend many of my acquaintances if I go beyond surface description of their events and experiences. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to mention, even if superficially, some experiences which always touch my heart.

    The first concerns a young woman who broke down after all her siblings had become married and left home. She would suddenly begin to scream at night that snakes were crawling all over her room. Her mother would rush in but will find no snake. She would spend the rest of the night peacefully in her mother’s room. This is telling a story which many psychiatrists and psychologists cannot easily decipher. I will explain it in subsequent parts of this column. Nevertheless, I will give a hint here. That hint is about something present in the mother which is not present in her and subdued something in the environment which was troubling her. Any inciteful Christian may easily pick up the story line from here. Did the legion of demons which assailed a man thought to be a lunatic not abandon him and flee into nearby swine when the Lord Jesus approached their victim? As we shall find out later in the course of this discussion, the intervening force was in the BLOOD COMPOSITION and in the radiation of the well composed blood of the Lord Jesus. It is also a secret of healing by touch during which power is transferred from the healthy person to the sick person as though from a functional and charging car battery jump starting a weak one. If we pay more attention to the scriptures, was the woman with the issue of blood not healed when she touched the garment of the Lord Jesus which was suffused with His Radiation? The scriptures also inform us that maidens stayed with aging kings to prolong their lives. Hematologists (blood doctors) and psychiatrists may discover in future that it was the radiation from the ANIMISTIC energy and blood of youths which suffused the bed chamber of the kings. Today, it has been proven that live plants give off RADIATIONS which may aid the recovery of sick persons. Does this have anything to do with the European culture in which bouquets of live flowers are given as get-well presents to sick persons? I cannot easily forget the scramble for rose flowers placed in altars during serious spiritual festivals. The rose flowers, on their own suffused with healing radiations are known to absorb alter RADIATIONS. When placed in a room, their capacity to emit RADIATIONS may subsist for more than one year. However, no radiation on earth surpasses the radiation of well composed blood. Therefore, composing and recomposing of blood through the diet and spiritual (not religious) activity is the duty of everyone during his or her life on earth.

    To continue this young woman’s story, she stabilised for a while. Later on, she was taken to a psychiatric home, perhaps to save the mother’s health from erosion. It was a counter productive effort. The psychiatric home was careless with security and its patient walked out… into the world till this day. She may have been upset by the drugs. The effects on her family cannot be described here.

    The second case is that of the first child of his parents who broke down because two of his younger siblings gained admission to higher institutions and he did not. His mother is an illustrious woman. Everywhere he went, she followed him in spirit. He, too, rejected anti depressant drugs. He even left Nigeria for a neighbouring African country to be free of her and his siblings. About three countries away, he was attacked by robbers who abandoned him in a state of coma. Good Samaritans took him to a Catholic hospital where humane doctors and nurses took his case over without financial reward. When he came round and the doctors learned he was a Nigerian, they raised money for him to return home. His mother almost jumped out of her skin one morning when she went to answer a knock on the door and stood face to face before her son who had been missing for months. He looked unkept from head to toe. She thought he had returned to kill her. The next move of the young man was shocking to her. He went down on all fours in prostration, appealing for forgiveness. In the dysperception of depression which presents white as black to the sufferer, he had seen his mother as a witch who preferred his siblings to him. Experience and holistic medical care which involved not only pharmaceuticals but love of the spirit revived him. We would read later in the other part of this column how doctors and psychologists can use nutrition, even water, love and knowledge of the spirit, to recompose the blood and heal depression and possesion without resort to killing anti depressants.

    Read Also: ‘People with mental health challenges need empathy, not stigmatization’

    If, again, I may give a hint here, the human body is made up of about 70 to 75 percent water and the blood almost 90 percent water. Dr. Samora Emoto of Japan has shown that, in most samples of water, the structural arrangement of water molecules is unnatural, and the unnaturalness can be impacted on them by the spoken and written human word and by music. He also showed that certain spoken words and written words beautifully rearranged the ugly structures and forms of denatured water samples. This is a hint which psychiatrists and clinical psychologists and nutritionists may wish to explore by incorporating into their practice Dr Emoto’s work which is on the internet, if, seriously, they wish to help persons in depression and POSSESED persons and are not merely interested in festering the nests of big pharmacy. Nutritionists, too, can explore on the internet the work of Semyor Kirlian who discovered a way to measure how much living power exists in the food we eat in the course of its journey from the farm to our dining table. Since the food will end up in the blood and since how vigorous or weak the blood is will determine if a person will slide into depression or not, it is important to pay serious attention to nutrition when we attempt to heal depression and possesion cases. However, this is not the case, going by the standards of Semyor Kirlian, in our psychiatric hospitals and rehabilitation centres. The tendency is to believe in, and to rely largely on DRUGS AND INJECTIONS and not on…THE RIGHT KINDS OF FOOD AND DRINKS and herbs as was recommended to humanity in the 1920s and 1930s. I will speak elaborately on this in the second part of this article.

    The reunion of mother and son mentioned in this second case has been a beautiful story ever since…he has married and is now a proud father of three children. His mother offers counselling services to parents who are grappling with the traumas of children in depression.

    The third case got me to write this column. As I write, I have just made a mother in her seventies to visit her son who is about half her age. His challenges began with hallucination about 16 years ago in junior secondary school. This could very well have been an astral or ethereal experience. Unfortunately, no one around him knew about such things. I suspected either experience because everyone I spoke with about him, including the subject himself, ruled out any case of substance abuse, and because, at 24, I had my first OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE (OBE) which no one could explain to me until the age of 27, three years later. Only psychiatrists and other brain doctors such as Dr. Abayomi Aiyesimoju, a neurologist, who are not intellectual in their practice of mental health medicine will understand and appreciate what I am saying. By “intellectual,” I do not necessarily mean “academic” or “erudition”. Intellectual here means delimiting one’s receptive capacity to only what the human brain can fathom, forgetting that the brain is limited to earthly conceptions of time and space, being of dust itself and cannot perceive existence and life beyond the earthly realm. The young man I am discussing had been looking up to me as a father for a life-line in about 10 years of our acquaintanceship since his mother and siblings connected us. They and his doctors have not allowed him go off these debilitating drugs for 16 years. Then, he was a university student. He is very versatile today in nutrition psychiatry. My intervention this week was to get his family to let him try nutrition for his condition as I noticed that anything short of this may drive him around the bend. Persons in depression do not discuss suicide for nothing.

    The third case in reference is assailed by many of the side effects of psychiatric drugs mentioned above. However, in Europe and America from where these drugs were introduced to Nigeria, patients have the right to reject and discontinue anti depressant treatment. Health care providers respect their autonomy in medical decision making. Doctors may be penalised for negligence or malpractice if they fail to properly inform patients about potential risks and side effects.

    As stated above, many persons reduce a variety of mental health questions to lunacy and stigmatise the challenged persons as such. For the avoidance of doubt, the following, according to an enlightened opinion on this subject is a number of challenges that may fit into the description of mental health:

    “DEPRESSION (Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness.),

    ANXIETY (Excessive worry, fear, or anxiety that interferes with daily life.:)

    INSOMNIA(Difficulty sleeping or staying asleep.)

    MEMORY LOSS ( Difficulty remembering recent events or learning new information) (e.g., Alzheimer’s disease, dementia).

    ANGER ISSUES: (Difficulty managing anger, leading to conflicts or aggressive behavior.)

    FEAR OR PHOBIA ( Excessive or irrational fear of specific objects, situations, or activities.)

    AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER ASD: (Neurodevelopmental disorder affecting social interaction, communication, and behaviour.)

    BIPOLAR DISORDER: (Mood swings ranging from manic highs to depressive lows.)

    POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER (PTSD): (Symptoms following a traumatic event, such as flashbacks, anxiety, or avoidance).

    OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER (Recurring, intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviours) (compulsions).

    ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD): (Difficulty with attention, impulse control, and hyperactivity).

    SCHIZOPHRENIA (Disrupted thought processes, perceptions, and emotions).

    EATING DISORDERS: (Abnormal eating patterns, such as anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or binge eating disorder).

    SUBSTANCE USE DISORDER (Dependence on or addiction to substances like drugs or alcohol.)

    PANIC DISORDER: (Recurring panic attacks, which are intense episodes of fear or discomfort.)

    SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER ( Fear or anxiety in social situations).

    BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER (Difficulty regulating emotions, leading to unstable relationships and impulsive behaviour.)

    TRAUMA: (Emotional or psychological distress following a traumatic event.)

    DEMENTIA: (Cognitive decline affecting memory, thinking, and daily life.)

    CHRONIC STRESS: (Ongoing stress that can impact mental and physical health.)

    Memory loss can be a symptom of various conditions, including dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Anger may arise from anxiety, depression, or trauma. Autism, a neurological disorder inhibits communication by walking in the OVERSELF”.

    How many of us, from the list above, do not have a mental health challenge or the other? Is it the man or woman who cannot easily sleep or sustain deep sleep to stage 4 or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep?

    Is it the man or woman who easily forgets where he or she kept the house or car key five minutes earlier?

    Is it the man or woman who hates to eat, who vomits on eating? Is it the man or woman who cannot control his temper and easily gets angry? Is it the man or woman who is hyperactive and, in addition, suffers from attention deficit to the point that he or she has become what is termed a scatterbrain? Is it the man or woman who is afraid of a crowd or cannot easily breathe in a bus or small enclosures such as a toilet room? The list is unending.