Compulsory mental health insurance coverage for Nigerian employees

Sir: It is now the norm for many organizations especially multinationals and large indigenous ones to have a health insurance scheme for their employees.

I recall as a youth corps member with The Shell Petroleum Development Company, Warri, over a decade ago, the scheme even extended to the retirees which were very generous in my estimation.

The coverage of these ailments varies from Health Management Organization (HMO) to HMO. In my interactions with some employees, I got to know that the health insurance only covered basic ailments like malaria, typhoid and cold. More life-threatening ones didn’t enjoy such coverage and the victims were left to the mercy of the elements.

A sturdy way to effectively combat the stigmatization faced by mental health patients is to extend this health insurance coverage to mental health. This way, they will be encouraged to open up about their struggles to the various organizations through the Human Resources Department and they will be supported to go for their medical appointments and a calendar to remind them of it can even be created so that the possibility of a relapse will be greatly reduced.

The major reason many employees who battle mental health challenges are afraid of opening up to their employers is that they are afraid of a backlash via stigmatization and discrimination which could very well cost them their jobs in a highly conservative society like ours. Mental health insurance coverage would help to combat this fear.

Another reason for the importance of mental health insurance coverage is because mental illness can happen to anybody as it is no respecter of age, creed, educational qualifications or status. I personally know some mental health experts that are battling with the ailment. The workplace is a hotbed for the affliction of mental illness because of the pressure in a fast-paced 21st-century knowledge-driven world where most workers are required to work long hours per week – 80 in some instances.

I read an interview granted by a renowned conflict journalist formerly of Arise News and now with German Media Giant, Deutsche Welle, Amaka Okoye, where she said she undergoes expensive therapy sessions after coverage of a conflict because the reportage would have badly affected her mental health. Imagine if she didn’t have the resources to go for the therapeutic visits to the mental health experts! The result is better left to our imaginations.

If she, with a wonderful job with growth prospects, can see the need for therapy, how much more those with dead-end jobs where salaries are hardly paid and training for employees is something that belongs to the neverland realm! What indeed is their fate as there are many mentally challenged patients in Nigeria who prides themselves as the ‘Giant of Africa’ who don’t know or acknowledge the fact that they have the ailment in the first place.