During a particularly difficult season, I told a loved one that I was feeling sad. Their response was quick and matter-of-fact: "You can't be sad. Nigerians don't get sad. We are one of the world's happiest people."
I was stunned. I retorted that this was untrue, and then, of course, I went and looked it up.
Ironically, they weren't entirely wrong. In 2003, the World Values Survey named Nigeria home to the happiest people in the world, and in 2011, a Gallup International poll found Nigerians to be among the most optimistic people on the planet (Adewunmi, 2011). However, the World Happiness Report, a broader measure of how people evaluate their lives, tells a different story. In 2026, Nigeria ranked 106th out of 147 countries, its third straight year of decline. What I gather from all of this is that the optimism and enthusiasm Nigerians have long been known for has slowly dimmed over the years.
It also left me wondering whether the people answering those surveys were sharing how they truly felt, or how they believed they should feel. If you ask the average Nigerian how they are doing, you may hear, out of the blue, "I am strong today." Not happy, not tired, not overwhelmed, but strong. I've come to believe that one word says a lot about what we have been taught to show the world, and what we have been taught to keep to ourselves.
My interest in this question goes back to my roots. Growing up in the diaspora, I watched the brutally slow evolution of how our community received the idea of mental health. At the same time, I was navigating my own push and pull of career pressure, cultural and gendered expectations, and all the isms one can experience being young and Black in a system designed for the opposite.
From a young age, I have loved observing people of all ages, shapes, and sizes. I connected patterns, discerned moods and motives, listened to their individual stories, and formed my own hypotheses from what I saw. Even though I studied economics in undergrad and went on to earn an MBA, there was still an itch within me to fully understand the human mind and condition.
So within the last two years, while still working in corporate, I started from scratch. I earned my second master's degree, in clinical psychology, along with my Associate Professional Counselor license. I guess you can call me something of a masochist, because the question I always got was why. I had already climbed the "traditional" ladder of success, so why go back for something perceived as not as lucrative? What was I trying to achieve?
To me, the answer is simple. I didn't return to school because I had failed at the first version of success. I returned because I had become increasingly interested in a question that success could not answer: what happens to the human being underneath all of our achievement?
As Nigerians, we are such a richly fascinating people: intelligent, resilient, colorful, spiritual, creative, and enterprising. One thing we are not so good at, though, is embracing and disclosing our mental health. We are still in the extremely early stages of that journey, and it has worked to the detriment of so many.
There is much research to support this that I will cite throughout. However, to make this fun, I will start with a few generalizations. I'd love for you to reflect on which ones you recognize:
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Your parents were the strong, silent types, who didn't want to acknowledge mental health issues and told you not to let others see you suffer or tell all your business, lest you become the topic of the community. Perhaps you've heard the popular Yoruba phrase "o ti ya werey," or "they've gone mad." |
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Your family's strong affinity to religious practices told you to give it all to God as your companion and provider, and not to go to man to fix your problems. You'd be even "crazier" if you went on medication. |
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Your friends and family teased you if you showed any signs of emotional sensitivity, perhaps telling you, "This your own is too much oh." |
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You carried the unspoken expectation that because you emigrated to a wealthier country, you weren't allowed to feel anything but grateful, even if the experience was the opposite of what you anticipated. |
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Or even better, you grew up watching those Nollywood movies featuring "crazy" people with white powder on their lips, talking to themselves, to spirits, or to the air. If you saw someone like that in real life, you consciously avoided them. |
While I am being cheeky with some of these generalizations, they are the reality for so many individuals, and they are incredibly harmful to internalize.
Yes, we are strong, resilient, and brilliant; however, we are also human.
Nigerians do, in fact, get sad. We can experience depression, anxiety, OCD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and all things classified within the DSM 5-TR (Diagnostic & Statistical Guide of Mental Disorders 5th ed.) or the ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision). Many of us carry mother wounds and father wounds from intergenerational trauma or from being the offspring of polygamy. Some carry trauma from the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War. Others live with a constant hypervigilance that comes from a general lack of emotional, physical, and psychological safety.
I cannot emphasize the danger of denying one's humanity and range of emotion because of cultural expectations enough.
Imagine if we were equipped to understand that our "strong, silent" parents were experiencing their own fears and trauma, and simply did not have the tools to articulate their emotions to their children. Imagine if we knew that religion and help-seeking can coexist without guilt, or how to support our emotionally sensitive friends and family without othering them. Imagine if we accepted that immigration can actually be isolating and depressing, or recognized that the character from those Nollywood movies was likely living with schizophrenia.
Grief, poverty, hunger, joblessness, and fear can break the human spirit, and yet we stigmatize these conditions, further pushing those who may want to seek help into silence and shame.
The numbers reflect this silence. In 2017, the World Health Organization estimated that about 3.9% of Nigerians, more than 7 million people, were living with depression. Another 2.7%, nearly 5 million people, were living with anxiety disorders. Both were the highest numbers in Africa. Knowing how much stigma shapes what we are willing to disclose, I would guess these figures are an undercount.
Getting help is even rarer. The Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN) estimates that more than 60 million Nigerians are living with some form of mental illness, and only about 10% of them can access appropriate care. That leaves a treatment gap of more than 90%. The Nigerian Survey of Mental Health and Well-Being, conducted between 2001 and 2003, painted a similar picture: among people with seriously disabling mental disorders, only about 8% had received any treatment in the previous year.
At the same time, the World Bank estimates that 63% of Nigerians, roughly 140 million people, were living below the national poverty line in 2025. One can infer that this alone can lead to a host of negative mental health outcomes. (Note: some of the research cited here is more than 20 years old. Recent research is few and far between, so current figures may have changed.)
That is just within the country. In the broader diaspora, where there is access, there is still shame and stigma around seeking help for mental health. Gender differences also exist in receptiveness. Anecdotally, while the women in my network are more open to exploring therapy, the men unequivocally shut it down; they would rather "go to God or talk to themselves." Selfishly, it breaks my heart; culturally, I understand.
Even when someone in Nigeria is ready to seek help, the help can be very hard to find. According to the APN, fewer than 200 psychiatrists serve a population of more than 220 million. That is at least 1.1 million people for every psychiatrist, and it only counts psychiatrists. We are not yet at the stage of having an accurate count of licensed counselors, psychologists, or social workers. The APN attributes much of the shortage to "japa," the mass emigration of Nigerian professionals in search of better opportunities abroad. That leaves those who remain overstretched and underpaid. As someone who also left, I don't say this with judgment, only with awareness of what that loss means for those at home.
Wada et al. (2021) highlight the urgent need for a concerted effort between the government, policymakers, and international organizations to make mental health services better, more accessible, and more affordable for the well-being of the populace.
Until that happens, the reality is that for most Nigerians who are struggling, the first and sometimes only "mental health professional" they will ever encounter is someone they already know. It may be a parent, a sibling, a pastor, an imam, or a friend. That makes how we respond matter so much more.
As I touched on in my last article, we are collectively raising a fundamentally different generation of children. They are growing up with a language for mental health that many of their parents and grandparents never had. By age 10, some children can talk about boundaries, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and emotional regulation in ways that would have been completely foreign to previous generations.
However, increased awareness does not necessarily mean increased well-being. Our children are growing up in an environment saturated with social media and comparison. They face body image pressures, financial anxiety, exposure to drugs and self-harm, and increasingly complex conversations about identity, relationships, and sexuality. Some are watching their peers take ADHD medication or struggle with eating disorders, self-harm, or substance use. Others are wrestling with questions of faith, religious guilt, or the expectations placed upon them by their families and communities. Many, like me, are also in-betweeners, holding two cultures at once and trying to make sense of their feelings in both.
This is where I think the conversation between generations matters. We should not dismiss every expression of distress as weakness, nor should we assume that every uncomfortable emotion requires a diagnosis. We have to learn to sit somewhere in the middle: listening before judging, asking questions before prescribing solutions, and helping young people develop the emotional vocabulary and coping skills that many of us were never taught.
Our parents survived by developing resilience in the absence of these conversations. Our children may have more language for what they are experiencing, but they still need guidance in learning what to do with that language. The goal should not be to raise children who never struggle. It should be to raise children who know that struggle is part of being human, and who know where to turn when they need help.
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A Few Things I Want Us All to Know
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We cannot afford to keep putting our heads in the sand about what people are experiencing daily. As someone who now sits with people in their hardest moments, here are a few things I wish more of us knew.
Nti, listen. My father's favorite word to me growing up was "nti," which means listen in Igbo. I didn't realize then how much wisdom was packed into that one word. When someone who is struggling comes to you, you may not know what to say or what to do, and that is okay. But try to resist reaching for the familiar lines: "Nigerians don't get sad," "Just pray about it," or "Others have it worse." However well-meaning, those statements close the door. Instead, try something as simple as, "That sounds really hard. Tell me more." Oftentimes, being heard is the very first step toward healing.
Find the words for what you feel, starting with yourself. "I'm fine" and "I'm strong today" can hide a great deal. Practice naming what you actually feel: tired, overwhelmed, lonely, anxious, disappointed. It is hard to care for what you cannot name. The more comfortable you become naming your own feelings, the safer others will feel naming theirs with you.
Let faith and help walk together. Prayer and therapy are not opposites, and many people find strength in both. If someone you love is struggling, encourage them to lean on their faith and to speak with a professional, a doctor, or a trusted counselor. Seeking help is not a lack of faith; in many ways, it can be an act of it.
The first step really is to acknowledge that yes, as a Nigerian, you can actually get sad. Step two is to educate yourself on the language that builds compassion and awareness. If you want to get into the field and become a diasporic mental health advocate, that's also a plus.
To close out, I am not here to write politics or comment on what Nigeria or Nigerians should or should not do. I am just here to highlight that people are struggling and having real human experiences. It's okay to be strong, resilient, smart, and amazing, and sometimes, it is truly okay not to be okay. It is absolutely okay to have "one of those days," to sometimes need help, or even to take medication to get through it.
We don't have to choose between resilience and vulnerability, between faith and therapy, between strength and softness, or between cultural pride and psychological honesty. Nigerians get sad. Nigerians get anxious. Nigerians grieve. Nigerians struggle. Nigerians heal.
Cultural identity should not keep you from being healthy, happy, well, and whole; it should amplify it. So, with all I have shared, I'll leave you with this: when was the last time someone truly asked how you were doing, and you told them the truth?
