Federal psychiatric hospitals, general state hospitals, state-owned rehabilitation centres, are among over two dozen facilities across Nigeria where thousands of people with mental health conditions are chained and locked up, says Human Rights Watch (HRW), which has called for the country to end all such abuse.
In September alone about 1,500 people were released from centres where they were said to be undergoing rehabilitation from various forms of mental illness and addictions. Earlier this month, 259 people were freed from an Islamic rehabilitation centre in Ibadan, in Southwest Nigeria.
“Detention, chaining, and violent treatment are pervasive in many settings, including state hospitals, rehabilitation centres, traditional healing centres, and both Christian and Islamic faith-based facilities,” said HRW Monday, after interviewing 124 people at 28 mental health facilities in Abuja and eight other states between August 2018 and September 2019.
HRW blamed “deep-rooted problems” in Nigeria’s healthcare and welfare systems for the inadequate mental health care or support in the communities. Nigeria has fewer than 300 psychiatrists for an estimated population of over 200 million.
Stigma and misunderstanding about mental health conditions, alongside a belief in the supernatural, informs the decision of relatives of mental health patients to seek help from religious or traditional healing places, the report showed.
The patients, including children, without their permission, are subjected to physical and emotional abuse, shackled with iron chains sometimes for months or years.
The police also arrest people with actual or perceived mental health conditions and send them to government-run rehabilitation centres, HRW said. The 1958 Lunacy Act, it notes, allows the detaining of people with mental health conditions in mental health institutions, even without providing medical or therapeutic treatment.
Also, in some cases, families take their children – including young adults – to religious and traditional rehabilitation centres for actual or perceived drug use or “deviant” behaviour, including skipping school, smoking tobacco or marijuana, or stealing from their parents.
“People with mental health conditions should be supported and provided with effective services in their communities, not chained and abused,” said Emina Ćerimović, senior disability rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “People with mental health conditions find themselves in chains in various places in Nigeria, subject to years of unimaginable hardship and abuse.”
HRW recommends a complete ban of chaining mental health patients, investigation into the matter, and the creation of awareness about mental health conditions and the rights of people with disabilities.
The international non-governmental organisation noted President Muhammadu Buhari’s condemnation of abuses in “Islamic” rehabs, but wants the government to acknowledge the wide-spread abuse in state-run facilities too.
