The news report published by Sunday Sun last week regarding the huge rate of suicides in Nigeria is quite worrisome and mind boggling. According to the story, a staggering 800, 000 people commit suicide in Nigeria yearly, a professor of psychiatry, Joseph Adeyemi has disclosed.

Adeyemi, who chaired a Lagos presentation of the book, ‘Shadows in the Mirror: the Many faces of Depression’, written by Dr. Vivian Ikem said people commit suicide due to depression, yet policies on mental challenges remain archaic.

My concern here is not whether the laws relating to depression and mental health are archaic or not, my concern is about the myriad of problems and challenges that could have been responsible for driving 800000 Nigerians to their graves every year. People die every day just as millions are born daily across the globe. But self inflicted death is the issue here.

It is generally agreed that Nigerians, nay Africans are among the peoples of the world who place maximum premium on life and living. Nigerians are known to cherish and enjoy life and this is in spite of the Felaic Suffering and Smiling tag yoked round their necks. Nigerians believe that come-what-may tomorrow is bound to be better and therefore would not take their own lives. Not anymore!

The report therefore that as many as close to a million people on the soil of this great but misdirected country snuff life out of themselves by themselves annually calls for inquiry and soul searching. It is also more worrisome when it is realised that youngsters as little as 7 year-olds are also included in this category of suicidal individuals.

Depression has been fingered by medical experts as the chief cause of suicides and the same depression has also been blamed for many lunacies. The case of lunacy will be treated in another conversation, but let us concentrate for now on suicides.

If depression is the chief culprit, what then are the factors inducing depression in as many as 800000 who go the whole hog of taking their own lives? We know from experience of life here in Nigeria that love and marriage related matters will be the least of the challenges leading to the kind of depression that ends up in suicide.

It is the state of the nation as evidenced in the past 16 years or so that could be blamed for the unprecedented frustration that has befallen most Nigerians. Unemployment has kept skyrocketing in the last sixteen years beginning from when many international corporations started relocating from Nigeria to other countries with more stable power supply and more stable economic policies. Hundreds of thousands of bread winners suddenly found themselves jobless and husbands, hitherto respectable husbands unwillingly submitted the headship of their families to their trader-wives!

It was last week that Tony Awe an expert in developmental economics drew my attention to the plight of the men and women in age bracket 35 to 55 who are daily gnashing their teeth as a result of loss of their means of livelihood. Most of the people in this category; highly educated, highly skilled professionals have been swept off their desks in the wake of massive retrenchments in the finance and banking sector, in the public service, in the mass media and in corporations and manufacturing establishments.

This is the traditional core of the Middle Class: people whose children are in tertiary institutions, people whose children are ripe for marriage, people who are repaying the mortgage on their houses and people whose parents depend upon for care and support. These men and women, now jobless, run from pillar to post searching frantically for jobs they never find and cannot find. This group of people cannot go into farming because there is no economic support from a directionless government and the interest charged on loans is one of the highest in the world.

Fortunately for most of the men and women in this group, Heart Attack does not give them the luxury of taking their own lives. They simply sleep and refuse to wake up or they slump and pass on having been graciously attacked by Mr Heart!

Depression has also taken a huge toll on millions of our tertiary institution graduates who have been sentenced to the labour market these past sixteen years. Many of such graduates have had several years of post-NYSC frustration forcing them to take to drugs as a means of escapism. The weaker ones quickly submit to crimes and join the Joneses in kidnapping, armed robbery and electronic fraud.

Religious institutions that are supposed to cushion the effect of frustration have become highly commercialised and doubly corrupt.

Homes with parents that are buried in frustration and hopelessness cannot provide succour to the young ones with a result that both parents and their children languish in perpetual pain.

Horrible stories of parents selling off their children, husbands wasting their wives in ritual murder, and several acts of bestiality have become commonplace. It is therefore not really surprising that a lot of people choked by the burden of helplessness and hopelessness would elect the easiest way out; suicide!

Regrettably, as lamented by Adeyemi in his remarks it is difficult to get depression patients to accept the fact of their illnesses.

Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode, in his comment on the subject said the issue of mental health has not received the attention it deserves.

According to him, the symptoms of depression could easily be observed, yet people turn a blind eye to the plight of victims, with attendant costs on the economy.

A prominent Nigerian leader and former Governor of Lagos State Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu said depression was a global problem, with 400 million people suffering from it, 12 per cent (48 million) of which are Nigerians.

While admitting that depression is a global issue, those charged with providing the necessary tools and conducive environmental for people’s health and general well being must be forthcoming in arresting this debilitating phenomenon.

We should also inculcate the African cherished tradition of the extended family system and the social, emotional and economic support which it provides.

We should abhor any situation that could make a fellow being take his or her own life. 800000 are suicides too many!

•Syndicated Columnist Tola Adeniyi (shown in photo) is former Executive Chairman/Editor-In-Chief of Daily Times.

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