The Mind Management Foundation, a non-governmental organisation, has called on the government, corporate bodies, health stakeholders, and members of the public to pay urgent attention to mental health.

The Director of the foundation, Barrister Arinze Emmanuels, made the call at a press conference in Lagos capital on Wednesday. He said that mental health is not a priority for the government, as evidenced by the low budget allocation to the sector.

According to Emmanuels, the foundation is currently training over 200,000 police officers on mental health awareness. He said that the training is necessary because police officers are often on the frontlines of dealing with people who are experiencing mental health problems

“Mental health is not so much important to the government, we can see that when we look at the budget allocation to that, it is just recently that it began to gain attention. In other parts of the world where they understand this, they give it a lot of attention and in their budgetary allocation. We call on the government, corporate bodies and all concerned citizens to look at this area which is a concern, we have seen a lot of instances of children’s schools, and police officers and this requires the attention of authorities, media, and corporate bodies to help us fight this dangerous threat.

“We don’t just deal only with paramilitary, we deal with the police, Road Safety Commission, civil defence, they’ve had training. Out of the 200, 000, we have got a bit already. We have volunteers across the country and we are training more so that is why we call on the government, and corporate bodies to support us,” he said.

Also speaking, Director, Lagos State Health Service Commission, Dr. Kanu Isaiah, said: “No mental health, no health. the expectation that people have about the police force is so high, that sometimes, they also forget that police officers are humans. Studies have shown that police officers are exposed to a lot of stress. We can classify these stresses into two major ones which are: operational stress and organisational stress.”

Assistant Inspector General of Police (AIG), Idowu Owohunwa represented Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Kuti Stephen, implored every police officer in all measures to cooperate with members of the foundation to help them improve their mental state.