This year’s World Mental Health Day theme, “Access to Services – Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies,” hits close to home. Because in Nigeria, it sometimes feels like we live in a never-ending emergency.

It is the “danfo” driver who has not rested in days because if he does not hustle, his family will not eat. It is the young graduate sending out job applications that never get replies. It is the mother juggling three side hustles or hawking in the street just to keep her children in school.

We do not talk about it much, but everyone is tired. Tired of pretending to be fine. Tired of carrying too much alone. Tired of an economy that never gets better, and even tired of getting tired.

Here, when you say you are not okay, people tell you to pray harder or to “be strong.” But even strength has limits. You can not pour from an empty cup, no matter how resilient you think you are.

I remember the case of Oyin, who decided to seek mental health support from a therapeutic home in Nigeria. When she got there, she was assigned a therapist. During her sessions, the therapist began preaching, telling her to “give her life to Christ,” turning what should have been therapy into a sermon. It is a sad reflection of how mental health is still misunderstood, even by those meant to help.

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World Mental Health Day is not something reserved for people “abroad.” It is for all of us, the worker battling burnout, the student drowning in pressure, the parent quietly breaking under the weight of bills. But the truth is, help is hard to find, and when found, it often is not what you need.

In a country of over 200 million people, we have only a few hundred qualified psychiatrists. And even when you manage to find one, therapy still feels out of reach for most Nigerians. So, we turn to music, humour, faith, or survival, anything that numbs the noise, even for a moment. Maybe that is why so many young people have turned to drugs instead, searching for relief in the wrong places.

But in the spirit of World Mental Health Day, we cannot keep quiet anymore. We need to start having honest conversations about mental health in our homes, our offices, our churches, and our mosques. We need to normalise asking, “How are you, really?” and meaning it.

As therapists, too, there’s a responsibility to do better: to separate personal faith from professional duty, to create balance, and to stop treating mental health challenges as purely spiritual or traditional issues.

Because sometimes the biggest catastrophes are not the ones on the news, they are the quiet ones happening inside people’s minds.

So today, take a moment. Check in on your friend who has gone quiet. Give yourself permission to rest without guilt. Talk to someone if it is getting too heavy.

We have all been told that Nigerians are strong. But maybe it is time to stop proving it all the time. Maybe the real strength is admitting when we are not okay, and finding the courage to get the help we need.

Cynthia Nwanonyiri