Opinion: Many are “mad” but few are roaming

by Aigbokhan Emmanuel

Stigmatisation and discrimination against the mentally disabled is a practice, albeit dispiriting, that pervades every culture in the world to varying degrees. And while many societies consciously make efforts to deter the practice, a few others simply aren’t doing enough.

Mental disorders like many other organ related disorders have specific symptoms which may or may not be tractable. Say there is an impairment of normal physiological function in the heart for instance, manifesting symptoms will directly or indirectly relate with the heart’s functionality. Similarly, when there is an impairment of normal physiological function in the brain, manifesting symptoms will likely mar the brain’s cognitive functions, emotive functions, lateralisation and language. Hence, seeing a mentally challenged bloke maundering rubbish with a stern look, digging through a pile of dirt all the while wanking, your instinctive reaction should not be fear or ridicule but compassion and sympathy

Also, owing to the brain’s complexity, mental disorders are about the most poorly understood conditions in the world; so much so that the no branch in medicine can definitively attest for its etiology.

Stringing parallels from my first paragraph, the Nigerian society presents quite the situation. Although attempts are being made to discourage stigmatisation against mentally challenged folks, there’s been very little progress. The oddity of the Nigerian society presents a situation that makes a herculean task of initiating a paradigm shift from our supposedly anomalous predisposition towards mental illness to a more sympathetic and compassionate one.
To delineate, I shall divagate a bit to canvas some of our endemic conventional knowledge on mental illness. While luxuriating during my leisure in the not so distant past, I stumbled on a Nollywood flick. The agonist (a she) in said movie had an aunt consumed by hate and envy on account of her recently improved marital status. Pandering to her vices aunty Ngozi eventually sort a solution from the village Dibia. There, she acquired the means to cause mayhem but she was given a caveat; one that must be strictly adhered to, or else she’ll be struck with madness. Plot sounds familiar right? I’ll leave you to conciliate the film’s final moments.
Nollywood flicks akin to the one aforementioned as well as misconstrued statements from eminent (religiously inclined) individuals (recall – “Sin is the cause of mental illness”) indeed reinforce a narrative that condemns mentally challenged folks to a dystopian reality

But then, our conceptualisation of mental illness may be faulty. Mental illness is an ambiguous term for a rather broad spectrum of brain related conditions – ranging in manifestation from mild to severe.

I will conclude with a story of Jerry. Jerry a student at the University of Benin hurriedly walked by a street off Uselu market one Saturday evening trying to get back to the campus as quickly as possible. Benin City basically shuts down by 7.00pm and commercial drivers were already closing for the day. On sighting a tricycle, he hustled to hop on but got involved in a scuffle with another prospective passenger. He eventually had his way and mid-way into the journey he began to yell – his member had been stolen; presumably by the other guy. Long story short, other guy was caught and almost lynched until the crowd spontaneously reached a decision to visit a brothel to confirm if Jerry’s member was still with him. It was.
A few months after this incident, Jerry leaving the campus (at Ugbowo) saw a mentally challenged woman strutting naked along the road and began to laugh.
On witnessing the latter incident, I was bewildered by Jerry’s actions. One mentally challenged person ridiculing another, I thought. A few months ago Jerry suffered a “Koro” related fit and here he was laughing at another with nothing more than a different kind of mental illness.

A lot more people than we’d like to think suffer from mental deficits that can be broadly categorised as mental illness. Stigmatisation and discrimination against a few with severe forms of the condition must stop.

Facebook: Huey Emma
Twitter: @Hueyemma769

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