Poverty is more than a financial problem; it has a great influence on mental health. The multidimensional poverty that millions of Nigerians face ranges from lack in terms of health (e.g., poor nutrition, etc.), education (e.g., lack of access to education, inability to continue school, etc.), to poor living standards (e.g., water, sanitation etc.).
Let us put this into perspective. Sade is a 12-year-old girl who has constantly been at war with hunger. She withdraws her enrollment from a free government primary school and starts to hawk things because her caregivers are poor. Although her efforts are to supplement the family’s income, they’re still unable to make ends meet. This makes her often go without meals. Sade lives in a shanty building somewhere in the slums of Lagos. Sade’s childhood is similar to those of many other children in Nigeria.
Let’s imagine Sade’s adulthood
Although we try to be optimistic, majority of these stories don’t always have a happy ending. Poverty is a cycle that could go on unbroken. Without education, a sudden windfall of life-changing money, or an intervention of sorts, it is almost impossible to break from this type of multidimensional poverty that Sade has been born into. Children like this often grow into adults who still suffer from multidimensional poverty.
How Does Poverty Affect Mental Health?
Research shows that people who experience poverty early in life or for an extended period, are at risk of negative health and developmental outcomes. Poverty in childhood can cause lower school achievement, poor cognition, negative behavioural outcomes, and poor attention-related outcomes. Also, it has a link with higher rates of delinquency, depressive and anxiety disorders, and psychiatric disorders found in adulthood. Furthermore, poverty in adulthood is linked to depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, psychological distress, and suicide.
A penny for your thoughts?
If we are thinking alike, you must be wondering how Nigeria is faring with the apparent lack of adequate mental health care and the endemic nature of poverty we have come to accept as a part of our socio-economic environment. Maybe rather than dwell on that, we should look at a way of solving these problems. There’s no better time than now to call on our government from the local level to the national level to fulfil their responsibilities to Nigerians. It’s time to mobilize for change in not just the financial management of the country but also in the mental health sector. The change we want to see in the mental health sector is more availability of mental health care and a change in our archaic mental health laws.
-Ebahi.