By Simeon OSAJIE
As the world marks 2025 World Mental Health Day, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Starburg Empowerment Foundation (SEF) on Friday reminded the world that mental health is a universal human right, even in time of crisis, deserter pain, every mind deserves care, love and support.
The theme for this year World Mental Health Day is “Mental Health in Nigeria Services – The Access to Services for Mental Health During Crisis”.
While sharing a short piece titled, “A Mind Deserves Light”, the Founder, Comrade Bakare Gloria opined, “A mind deserves light. In silence, many hearts will ache, behind their smile, their souls may break. Some battles hide where eyes cannot see, but every mind deserves to be free. The mind is fragile yet strong inside, it needs compassion, not a place to hide. Let’s listen more and judge much less.
“For love and care, bring healing best, in time of crisis, war or pain, support must reach like gentle rain. No one should walk this road alone. Every life deserves a healing too. Mental health is a human right. To seek all peace, to live in light, together we can break the chain and give lost hope its strength again.
“So let us rise, both heart and voice, to spread awareness. Make this choice to stand for minds to care for fights. For every heart deserves the light.
“As we mark this day, let’s remember there is no head without wings. Together we can keep breaking stigma, building strength and save life.”
Going further, the Founder, Comrade Bakare said Starburg Empowerment Foundation is committed day-to-day to break stigma, build strength and save life. Through Mental Health Awareness Campaign, Empowerment Initiative, community support and we give voices to autistic children.
Contributing, the President, Conference of Non-Governmental Organization, Comrade (Dr) Bartholomew Okodo called on Governments at all stages to take the socio and economic welfare of the people a top priority so that the effect of mental health in our society will be reduce.
Comrade Okodo who stated that government should create the enabling environment for economic activities to thrive, noted that when economic activity thrives, people are able to take care of themselves; people are able to fend for themselves – free education policy that will bring children back to school, even if they are from broken home, or they have no parent at home, they should be in school, because every child deserve the right to be in school. If they are in school, the high rate of crime by the juvenile delinquency will reduce.”
While appreciating Starburg Empowerment Foundation for the awareness campaign, Comrade Okodo urged every other NGO working in the health sector to support Starburg Empowerment Foundation to be able to create more awareness on the issue of mental health.
On her part, a member of Starburg Empowerment Foundation, Omowaye Omege noted that going by what is going on in the economy of Nigeria, a lot of people are going through a lot of stress, which eventually results in depression.
She urged members of the society to be careful in the way they judge people. “It’s good that we are creating awareness, so that people will know that a lot of people are going through a lot of tribulations. There are some children that came from a home that’s already divided, and you see their parents sending them out there to go and do prostitution.
“These days, you see parents even forcing their children into yahoo-yahoo, just because they want to make money. We should be able to organize more of this program to create awareness for people, so that the world will be better.”