Nigeria has a mental health problem

One in four Nigerians suffers from mental illness, but help is hampered by tight budgets and a lack of skilled staff.

On the outside, the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital Yaba seems tranquil.

But on the inside of this century-old facility - one of only a half-dozen psychiatric centres in Lagos, and the only one run by the federal government of Nigeria - tensions are running high.

At the outpatient clinic, the crowd of people waiting to consult with doctors is so thick that it spills into the hallway.

The workload is so overwhelming that Dr Dapo Adegbaju, a psychiatrist rushing to attend to an agitated patient, has slept in the hospital for the past two nights.

In the emergency ward, a patient named Jide languishes in a queue where he has been waiting since 7am.

It is not yet noon at Yaba hospital, but this is business as usual. The hospital saw a 22 percent increase in the number of new patients with different types of mental illnesses in 2018 - along with a 50 percent increase in the number of patients struggling with substance abuse.

One in four Nigerians - some 50 million people - are suffering from some sort of mental illness, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Today finds the country nowhere near equipped to tackle the problem.

There are only eight federal neuropsychiatric hospitals in Nigeria. With dire budget and staffing shortfalls prompting doctors to go on strike, leave the country, or quit the medical profession altogether, the prognosis looks as grim for psychiatric care at Yaba hospital as it does for Nigeria's healthcare system as a whole.

© Aljazeera