IBBU, American agency train mental health facilitators

Concerned by the increasing rate of depression and suicide attempts among youths, the Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University (IBBU), Lapai, in collaboration with an American-based National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), has commenced the training of mental health facilitators.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university Prof Ibrahim Adamu Kolo on Monday said insecurity and other socio-economic challenges in the country have heightened the number of depression casualties, hence the need to train mental health facilitators in the country.

He stated that the training of mental health facilitators which was the first of its kind in West Africa would attempt to solve mental problems through counseling.

Kolo lamented the dearth of experts in the country explaining for the high rate of people who indulged in suicide activities.

The case, Kolo stressed, has been worsened by lack of specialists in Mental Health as well as training facilitator that will handle depressions associated with various occurrences being witnessed daily in the country.

Kolo hinted that two universities and IBBU were chosen from Nigeria for the training of the facilitators but others have not shown sufficient interest, hence the choice of IBBU by the American base agency.

He said participants were drawn among professionals, including counsellors, disaster and risk managers from the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA),

The guest speaker Dr. Charles Igwuegbulam, said statistics have shown that there are 150 million people with one form of mental health problems across the world with most of them from developing nations.

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