Mental Health & My Journey

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Mental health! I honestly do not know where to start from, will I start from highlighting how underrated and over-neglected it has been, or how everyone, treats it with kids-gloves, to only end up having it hunt us? Our mental health and well-being has always been relegated to the background.

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What is health to start with?

During my early days in college as a medical imaging technologist, the definition of health was a very crucial part of our lessons, and I can remember every bit of it as it was so simple but comprehensive. Here is the most common definition of health as proposed by the World Health Organization:

Health is a complete state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity.

If you notice, I've highlighted "mental", because for most people, you just need to look healthy to be healthy, mental health is usually not part of the picture.

But as you've seen from this comprehensive definition of health, mental health is a huge part of the picture, as well as social health. So, in essence, you need to look healthy, feel healthy, and have everyone around you convinced that you look, feel and act healthy.

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What's Mental Health & Why is it Important?

According to the experts in WHO, here is the definition of mental health: "Mental health is a state of mental well-being that enables people to cope with the stresses of life, realize their abilities, learn well and work well, and contribute to their community.".

I've went way further to conceptualize mental health, and this is necessary before delving deep into other aspects of it. One is only mentally healthy, when they are able to cope with stresses of life, have a modest appraisal of their abilities, are able to learn well, work well and contribute efficiently to both their micro and macro community (Lol! I am being highly intellectual here 🤣).

Clearly, it is seen that a good state of mental health and wellbeing is necessary and vital if one must thrive. A lot of persons not doing so well today and not thriving in life as much as their potential allows could be as a result of a poor mental health and/or being in an environment that impedes their mental health and well-being, for example, living in Nigeria is not good for mental health.

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My Mental Health As A Nigerian

Before talking about the parasitic relationship living in Nigeria and my mental health, I want to get a few things out of the way:

• Not all Nigerians would feel the way I do (individual circumstances vary significantly)
• Nigeria is not necessary the worse place on earth
• No one can be completely healthy whether mentally, socially, or physically.

With that out of the way, living in Nigeria as a Nigerian has been one of the key foundations of my mental health issues. Most Nigerians who are not politicians, influencers, or celebrities would agree with me on this.

Our problems in this country range from severe economic woes, dying morals, societal issues, and more. Among the plethora of issues we face down here, one major source of mental health challenges is how these issues impede my ability to thrive.

It feels like the country is fighting against all my attempts to thrive, like a very personal battle between myself and the government. The government keeps making wrong decisions and we keep suffering the consequences. It's not easy living in Nigeria. Especially living with the poor decisions by the government at all levels.

Even my attempt to leave the country is being made difficult by the government and fellow Nigerians, from how simple processes are becoming unnecessarily complicated, and how you've to bribe your way through all processes.

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How I've Managed to Stay Mentally Sound

Initially, I always dwelt on my worries and the unending problems and issues with my country. Much later, I observed I wasn't doing myself the best, so I had to tame my expectations and have a more modest approach to it.

I came to realize first that no country is perfect, and while mine is worse, things aren't getting any better, and there is very little to nothing I can do to help the situation. So, instead of dwelling and worrying over something I have very little or no control over, I focused on what I can do. So, I focused more on myself, more on self-improvement and more on self-love. So, while I cannot see the country thrive, I started seeing myself improve and get better and that did a lot of good to me.

Another important thing I did was to tame my consumption of news. Honestly, we should call news bad news these days, as it is very hard to consume 10 minutes of it without feeling like asking about what the world is turning to. While the news covers important events and announcements, in reality, not all of its content was directly for me. I found that most often than none, the news only adds to my anxiety and nothing more. So, for my mental health sake, I've kept news in there proper place.

This is just a snippet of my mental health journey. Maybe, in the next related prompt, I would share more.