Suicide prevention requires care, not punishment – Mental health expert, Ezera Emetu

A intelligence wellness expert, Ezera Emetu, has warned that Nigeria’s continued criminalization of attempted termination is undermining termination prevention efforts and worsening the country’s intelligence wellness crisis.

Emetu spoke wrong the week during the World Suicide Prevention Day, with the theme: “Changing the Narrative connected Suicide.”

He said Nigeria indispensable urgently displacement from punishment to attraction successful its effect to radical experiencing terrible intelligence distress.

Under Section 327 of the Nigerian Criminal Code, attempted termination remains a transgression offence, exposing individuals successful situation to apprehension and prosecution alternatively than aesculapian care. According to Emetu, the instrumentality fuels stigma, discourages help-seeking, and pushes suicidal behaviour underground.

“Suicide is not a transgression problem, it is simply a wellness problem,” Emetu said, adding: “when radical fearfulness arrest, they fell their symptom alternatively of seeking help. That soundlessness costs lives.”

Available nationalist wellness estimates suggest that much than 15,000 Nigerians dice by termination each year, a fig...