I saw a viral tweet about someone getting anxiety over phonecalls, and another about anxiety over texting.

Life is so good that banal things like texts and calls give people a reason to be anxious. ?

We're truly living in the best days.

— Chairman AW (@AffiSupaStar) May 17, 2020

This was the tweet that awoken Twitter users today to revisit the issue of anxiety.

Anxiety, much like every other ailment that may appear foreign to the average Nigerian, is an issue that is to this day, heavily stigmatized. Some Nigerians have a rusty habit of defaming, discrediting and refuting anything that may seem threatening to the society’s status quo. We saw it with the sexually transmitted disease; AIDS, where a false narrative that ‘HIV no dey kill black man’ spread like wild fire, evidently causing a spike in the disease within the continent as people didn’t see it necessary to protect themselves against a “white man’s disease.”

We have seen it with the recent Coronavirus, where people actually claimed that our weather would help combat the potency of the virus, and as such didn’t give it enough consideration to avoid an outbreak, and with anxiety, the approach remains the same.

People in this part of the earth, seem to think that if you ignore it for long enough, maybe, just maybe, it might go away, but history proves that it is almost never the case. We need to adapt the popular principle of ‘nipping it in the bud’ so that when we see an issue like depression and anxiety arising, we don’t dismiss it to be a demographic thing, that only affects certain people, but treat it with severity, so as to curtail its impending damage as much as possible.

This apparently, is not what consistent with the thinking of everyone. Some still hold a worrying view that illness is selective of its victims and that anxiety, especially from ‘mundane things,’ are symptoms of a weak mental state.

The world is so good for some we're breeding the worst sissies in the world. My Ghurrd it's embarrassing.

— Chairman AW (@AffiSupaStar) May 17, 2020

Like Twitter user @AffiSupaStar implied, if you suffer from anxiety as that, life is so good for you that your biggest problem is anxiety. This did not sit well with people as they had a lot to say.

This is a very unfair take and quite dismissive of what people pass through in that aspect. You could try asking someone that goes through this to break it down for you so you get a better sense of what a person that has to deal with this goes through.

— Bolouere (@boluxxxx) May 18, 2020

But it's actually just plain stupidity for someone to think people suffering from mental stress are sissies.

— call me when you feel sick?? (@CocoMoneek) May 18, 2020

People think it's hip to be mean and show lack of empathy. I don block that Affi super star kini kan. No time for nonsense.

— Don (@Don_Kane) May 18, 2020

 

Ironically, some people think she is right:

I’m trying to see how Affi’s tweet means she lacks empathy.

— Omo n’ Oba (@misopinion8ed) May 18, 2020

Affi wasn't wrong….

What she said was people are getting softer because this new world cuddles you guys.

Everything is attributed to mental health and increasingly people just embrace that excuse and become suboptimal in life..

— Egbuna (@E_gbu_na) May 18, 2020

It is important that we take a cue from some other people around the world who have had a history with anxiety-related tragedies, such as suicides and  high levels of depression and/or PTSDs. You can tell from a few mishaps in their society, that if something as sensitive as anxiety is not handled properly, it could lead to other problems that are too difficult to get rid of.