THE Federal Government has announced plans to integrate psychosocial and mental health support into its humanitarian response for children affected by conflicts across the country.

The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Reduction, Dr Bernard Doro, disclosed this at the National Policy Dialogue on the Psychosocial Impact of Conflicts on Children in Nigeria, held at the Muhammadu Buhari Conference Centre, University of Maiduguri, Borno State.

In a statement issued in Abuja by his Senior Technical Adviser on Information Systems and Data Analysis, Dr Abimbola Fasanu, the minister reaffirmed the federal government’s commitment to addressing the psychological wounds of insurgency alongside physical interventions.

Doro emphasised that humanitarian responses must exceed the mere provision of immediate physical needs.

He said “Our ministry treats psychosocial wellbeing as central to humanitarian response, not a side issue, connected, through our humanitarian, development and peace approach, to protection, education, nutrition and household stability.

“A child who has been fed but not healed in mind has not truly been rescued.”

Highlighting the alarming scale of psychological distress, the minister cited a study indicating that 41.5 per cent of children exposed to the Boko Haram insurgency in Chibok met the clinical threshold for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Furthermore, a national study of displaced Nigerian children reported PTSD at 79.7 per cent, depression at 84.8 per cent, and functional impairment at 90.7 per cent.
This is a documented, measurable pattern, not an isolated tragedy,” the lamented, noting that affected children frequently experience anxiety, anger, and persistent hyper vigilance.

To effectively tackle these challenges, Doro said the government is developing the One Humanitarian, One Poverty Response System (OHOPRS) to harmonise coordination across humanitarian, social protection, and poverty reduction frameworks.

He pointed that “This is why we are building OHOPRS, so a distressed child identified in a Maiduguri school is not lost in a system that does not talk to itself,” he noted.

Unveiling the government’s commitments, Doro stated that the ministry would collaborate with the health sector to strengthen community referral pathways and train frontline workers, including teachers, to identify and respond to childhood trauma.
He adds that mental health support is an investment in national stability rather than charity because “Untreated trauma in a generation of children is a cost that returns to our schools, our clinics and our security for decades.

“Every naira spent healing a child’s mind today is one we will not spend containing that wound twenty years from now.”