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

The Director of the foundation, Arinze Emmanuels, made the call at a press conference in Lagos yesterday. He also disclosed that the foundation is training over 200,000 police officers on mental health awareness, saying the training became necessary because police officers are often on the frontlines of dealing with people with mental health problems

He lamented low budgetary allocation to mental health, saying it was an indication that the government was not taking mental health seriously.

“Mental health is not so 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.”