New Mental Health Law: She Writes Woman Lauds Persons With Mental Health Conditions
On Friday, January 6th 2023, President Muhammadu Buhari assented to Nigeria’s first mental health law post-independence. Since the Lunacy Act of 1958, Nigeria - a country with over 200 million people and about 60 million people living with mental health conditions (according to the Federal Ministry of Health) - has been without a specific guiding law for people interacting with mental health services across the country.
Recall that since the push by various stakeholders in the early 2000s to pass a mental health law, the year 2020 witnessed the first time people with psychosocial disabilities were included in the process. In her landmark appearance at the public hearing of the mental health bill in February 2020, She Writes Woman’s Executive Director, Hauwa Ojeifo made history as the first person with a mental health condition to testify in that capacity before the Nigerian Senate.
Ojeifo’s testimony was a call for the “sufficient consultation” of persons with psychosocial disabilities, as well as salient points including delinking mental health and substance abuse, use of more human right-respecting language as well as upholding Nigeria’s international human rights commitments to ensuring free and informed consent and freedom from unlawful detention simply on the basis of mental health status.
She Writes Woman’s Executive Director, Hauwa Ojeifo, at the National Assembly in February 2020 where she made history as the first person living with a mental health condition to testify in that capacity before the Nigerian parliament.
With the support of the Disability Rights Fund (DRF), She Writes Woman Mental Health Initiative - a leading mental health rights-based advocacy organisation - continued on-the-ground advocacy visits to members of the National Assembly, allies in the disability and health communities as well as the international human rights community. In addition, DRF supported She Writes Woman in training over 100 people living with mental health conditions on strategic advocacy for pursuing rights-based approaches to mental health whilst being key decision-makers in carrying out meaningful participation in matters that affect them.
Since the landmark appearance at the National Assembly, She Writes Woman has helped highlight the realities of persons living with mental health conditions in Nigeria - incidences of chaining, shackling and forced detention - through collaborative research reports whilst empowering them to co-create solutions that address these realities.
LINKS
Hauwa Ojeifo testifies before the National Assembly:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=J4ms0IEf63I&t=9s
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