TUNDE ADELEKE, Osogbo
A medical practitioner, Dr. Fikayo Adeyemi, has urged all levels of government to pay adequate attention to mental health issues.
Speaking at Osun State General Hospital, Osogbo, during the donation of beds and beddings to the mental health department in partnership with Adeniyi Adediran and Sandef, Adeyemi, who serves as the Executive Director of the Benson Adeyemi Foundation, noted that mental health cases continue to rise due to inadequate attention from stakeholders.
He revealed that the foundation visits the hospital weekly to help subsidize medical bills for individuals with mental illnesses, emphasizing the need for more support to address the challenges they face.
“We come every week to subsidise hospital bills of people with mental illness. We come here to adopt patients and take care of all their bills. We also pick people with mental health on the street, take them to the mental health hospital, pay their hospital bills, get them well and reintegrate them into society.
“We are donating beds today for the hospital to enable them to admit more patients. The current government under the leadership of Governor Ademola Adeleke is trying. But we want to appeal to the government to pay more focus to the issue of mental health. With the little we are doing, if the government can pay full attention to the issue, it will go a long way,” Adeyemi said.
Meanwhile, the Chief Consultant to the hospital, Dr Dare Rachael Folasade, lauded the foundation for its support in the past one year, noting that the support has really helped their work in the ward.
Folasade, a consultant psychiatrist, lamented the increasing rate of mental health issues, blaming societal issues, genetic issues, family dynamics and the use of substances for the disorder.
“Sandef has been supporting us for the past one year. This donation can serve a lot of people for many years. On behalf of the permanent secretary, hospital management board, I appreciate the Sandef and the team.
“For the support on medication, the majority of my clients now come back with stable minds most of the time. Some of them have been free of symptoms for months.
“Mental illness has a multifactorial etiology. The factor can be social, it can economic, it can be genetic. So, we have a situation where the social environment is toxic, where businesses are not going, its most likely going to increase the rate of mental health.
“I see more patients these days, probably because of the awareness that we have in mental health services and the nature of the environment. The societal issue, the genetic issue, the family dynamics, the use of substances, and so on, all these can increase mental health disorder,” Folasade added.
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