How Niah Foundation promotes Mental Health Awareness and the integration of special needs children
Mental health issues are prevalent in Nigeria today, with over 20 million Nigerians currently suffering from various degrees of mental disorders or illnesses without medical care, according to the World Health Organisation.
Due to the massive lack of awareness and orientation on mental health, many Nigerians term mental illnesses as spiritual problems and many young people make light of their struggles with mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety. Some misguidedly think these struggles are cool, while others do not speak up about them due to fear of stigmatization.
“Enough people don’t understand what [Mental health] is about. Enough people don’t see the need to take this seriously and they don’t see how it is affecting their daily lives. They’re going through things because this isn’t under control” said Chenaniah Bamishile, founder of Niah Foundation, a nonprofit that creates awareness for mental health and promotes the inclusion, care, and integration of special needs children into systems in Nigeria.
Bamishile founded Niah Foundation as an undergraduate with the mission to bridge the gap between mentally challenged patients and mental health care providers in Nigeria, to raise awareness for mental health amongst youth, and to finance standardized care for special needs children in Nigeria. She was motivated to become a mental health advocate after years of listening to the problems of her young friends and providing advice and research-backed guidance for them.
“I realized that I could apply my counseling skills to mental health [advocacy]. So I decided that I was going to be a mental health awareness advocate because a lot of people aren’t taking mental health seriously. A lot of people aren’t realizing that mental health affects their daily lives,” she said
When Bamishile started her journey as an advocate, she received support from family and friends and it was through her early activities on mental health awareness that she got the idea to start her foundation. As an undergraduate then, she juggled her academics with her advocacy work, and in an interview with the baseline, she admitted that finding a balance between the two was one of the biggest challenges she faced. Another challenge she faced was funding as she was using her allowance to fund her advocacy activities like creating infomercials, and organizing interviews and campaigns.
A unique attribute of Niah Foundation is that its advocacy campaigns are embedded in charitable outreaches and programs. Although the nonprofit is a mental health advocacy organization, it still organizes clothing donation drives, medical outreaches, and other programs catered to less privileged communities. According to Bamishile, a lot of Nigerians don’t know much about mental health and a lot don’t want to learn or prioritize it as they don’t know the impact of their mental health on their daily lives. So the foundation tries to meet the needs of underprivileged communities and then talks to them about mental health in the process.
Speaking about this, she said:
“I’m a serial volunteer, I’ve volunteered for several programs, and because these charitable outreaches attract large crowds, we try to recreate them and use them as mediums to talk to people about mental health. We’ve had medical outreaches where we’ve taken doctors to communities, given free diagnosis and medication, [organized] food drive outreaches, clothing donation drives, blood transfusion drives, giving out sanitary pads and hygiene products to girls and We’ve gone to schools to teach and correctional facilities to talk about mental health.“
Recounting her most memorable moment from the foundation’s programs and outreaches, Bamishile talked about the foundation’s medical outreach in 2022 to the community at Iju Ishaga, Lagos. According to her, nothing went according to plan, everything went wrong, and yet the outreach was a success. Despite volunteers getting lost en route to the remote community, and the funds raised turning out to be insufficient, the beneficiaries were still positively impacted. Last-minute donations were made on the day of the event that covered the unforeseen costs.
She also shared the foundation’s biggest achievement so far, passing the 100-people mark per outreach. At each of Niah Foundation’s recent outreaches and programs, a minimum of 100 people were impacted. According to her, “We believe [since] we’ve passed that, we’re only helping more than that [moving forward]. It’s only going to get bigger and better. And that’s something I’m proud of.”
In terms of her plans for the future, Bamishile said:
“I have so many plans for the foundation’s future. I’m very excited about local and International partnerships, I’m very excited about doing more for special needs children. Initiatives and plans. I see my foundation becoming so big and having [an] impact across not just Lagos but Nigeria and it’s these partnerships that will help grow our reach to different places and [enable] people [to] see our impact and reach across Nigeria.”
