HEALTH TALK: Disability and mental health in Nigeria: Promoting awareness in supporting people living with disabilities

…Continued from last week 

By Sulaiman Tajudeen 

diabetes can cause long term disability.

• Work-related disability.
• Learning disability.
• Disability acquired through pregnancy.
• Lifestyle choices (i.e not disabled but decided to beg or behave like one).
• Mental health retardation/ behavioural problems.
• Road accident or occupational injury.
• Disability as a result of violence or conflict in the community.
• Malnutrition due to poverty in the society.
• It is generally agreed that mental health problems are the single largest cause of disabilities in the world (PAHO/WHO 2019/20).

CHARACTERISTICS OF DISABILITY
• Inability to stay on a given task.
• Easily distracted.
• Poor time management skills.
• Difficulty in preparing class assignments, keeping appointments and attending class on time.
• Reading comprehension difficulties.
• Difficulty with maths problems, intellectual capacity etc.
• Physical disabilities/inabilities to carry out physical activities.

COUNSELLING STRATEGIES
1. Early intervention: Take prompt action when you notice the condition.
2. Parents should support their children in all areas of needs.
3. Parents should encourage their wards to learn how to interact with normal population of their age.
4. Treatment in the environment tends to give good result than institutionalized environment.
5. Encourage good interpersonal relation with other people in the society (do not isolate them).
6. Government/NGOs should establish more special schools in the society.
7. Government/ NGOs should empower persons with disabilities.
8. People living in disability should not be stigmatized against.
9. People with intellectual disability can also live an independent, fulfilled and productive with adequate supervision, assistance and support.
10. Aggressive behaviour could be managed with medication by medical experts.
11. Behavioural therapy could help clients manage their various behavioural problems.
12. Speech therapy could help those that have speech problems.
13. Reinforce good behaviour while you discourage negative behaviour.
14. Vocational training could be of help to those that can not make it in academic.
15. They should not be discouraged from carrying out social responsibilities (i.e marriage, hiring them for employment, social support help to reduce physical exercise).
16. Educating family members about the condition by the clinical psychologist and other mental health team.
17. Self-help group therapy can be helpful as well.
18. Ensure that you create job opportunity for the people living in disability (i.e government, private organisations and NGOs should create job opportunity for people living with disabilities).
19. Specialized form of education is needed for this category of people.
20. Provide individual or group therapy for people living with disabilities.

We hope you enjoyed the concluding part of this article.

Join Dr Suleiman Tajudeen next week for another interesting topic.

Dr Sulaiman Tajudeen is Head, Clinical Psychology, Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Idi-araba, Lagos State.