The event gathered various stakeholders to engage in discussions about digital transformation, legislation, and cultural competence in mental health care.

Chaired by Femi Olubanwo, founding partner of Banwo & Ighodalo, the summit featured keynote speeches from Dr Tolu Aderemi, director of Perchstone & Graeys Consulting Limited, healthcare consultant Dr Omoseyindemi, Ina Alogwu, group director of digital transformation at ARM Holdings, certified workplace wellness talk therapist Adeboyin Olukoya, and occupational health physician, Dr Taiwo Akinoso.

Additionally, a panel discussion on Mental Health at Work showcased insights from Yemi Ajayi, CEO of Exitum Consulting, integrative life coach Tolu Afonja, Princess Adeyinka Tekenah, founder of Happy Coffee and educator, learning and development expert Zainab Atobatele and Morenikeji Olaniyi-Agboola, assistant director of Nursing Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba.

Keynote speaker, Dr Aderemi said,

“Nigeria with a population of over 200 million people has fewer than 300 psychiatrists accounting for a ratio of about 700,000 people per psychiatrist,” adding that there are “only eight neuro-psychiatric hospitals in Nigeria.”

During her address, the founder of Mindsplace, Eniola Bello said that according to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in four Nigerians, approximately 50 million people, experience some form of mental illness. However, access to mental healthcare in Nigeria is difficult, with only one in ten individuals receiving adequate treatment.

“The psychiatrist-to-population ratio highlights the urgent need for technology to help close the gap. That’s why I established Mindsplace, a telepsychiatry platform dedicated to offering accessible and personalised mental healthcare.

“Mindsplace was birthed as Speak Your Mind in 2013 but rebranded to Mindsplace in 2016. Since launch, we have been advocating for mental health because we realised that the first challenge was poor awareness and education. Now that we’re seeing progress in that area, we’re moving to the next phase of providing a web and mobile app for people to thrive,” Miss Bello said.

The Mindsplace web and mobile app will be available for download on the Google Play and iOs stores and provide therapy services, online resources, and a supportive community to help individuals achieve emotional well-being.

The ecosystem will include doctors, therapists, healthcare providers, wellness vendors, pharmacists, and even logistics companies to deliver prescriptions to users.

The platform’s specialisations will include anxiety and stress management, child and adolescent counselling, couples and relationship counselling, trauma and PTSD therapy, depression and mood disorder management, affirmation, eating disorders, body image, addiction and substance abuse therapy.

The summit also featured participation and exhibition from JAALS Foundation, Eat to Wealth, NASoW Lagos, Little Saint, Shades of life, Ovations Media Group, Fotoba Nigeria Limited and Rotary Club of Ikeja, Alausa and Revolution Districts and Brand Spark.

While bringing many benefits to people globally, social media has a downside from causing anxiety, fear of missing out, cyberbullying or stress, to other complications. 

Kaspersky experts share their tips on how technology can help users reduce online stress as well as protect themselves.

1. Limit oversharing

In the new era of social media, the safest option is to pay close attention to what you share online. Over-sharing can make you more vulnerable to criticism from others, which can exacerbate anxiety. Another reason is to protect personal data from strangers.

For example, users can accidentally leave details of flight tickets or other data such as a personal address in a great vacation photo.

Today, anyone can go to someone’s account and see what they share with others, so it’s safer not to give scammers any chance to use your personal information. 

2. Learn how to deal with tough comments

Unfortunately, it’s almost inevitable you’ll face a bully or hater if you post a lot of content online. The situation can become especially tough if kids have to face it.

Expert insights urge people not to take any bad or hurtful comments to heart, become upset, or more importantly give up on their dream.

It’s important to be aware that trolls or aggressors are looking for a reaction as their main goal is to hurt or provoke emotions.

The more attention aggressors receive, the more they will continue to write negative posts.

To face bullies without harming your own mental health, it’s a good practice to teach children how to work with negative comments – for example, to ignore troll posts, delete negative comments, or report insults to moderators. It might also be a good idea to turn off comments.

Additional help could be to take small breaks and digital detox to escape from social networks, so you can relax and focus on yourself. Kaspersky has launched a digital CyberSpa space, to help people distract from worries and take a few calming breaths when you need to refocus. 

3. Make social accounts private

To reduce the risk of running into a hater or sharing sensitive information, a good defense is to increase the level of account privacy. Various social networks have different privacy settings:

Facebook

• Facebook has a special Help Center, that will help adjust the privacy settings for accounts
• Facebook offers a selection of tools to fight cyberbullying. For instance, the company has developed a separate Anti-Bullying Center for Teens.
• Users can also track who tags them on their content. This can be done in the Chronicle & Tags settings.
• A great option is to check already published materials with users’ tags, and, if necessary, you can remove yourself from materials you do not want to be associated with, using the “Activity Log”.

Instagram

• Users can use a restrictive tool to protect their account without notifying the unwanted visitors
• Change of the privacy setting allows you to choose who can watch and comment on users’ content.
• You can moderate comments under your posts.
• Instagram tracks the content posted by users. If the platform sees possible violations, it will notify the user that they are about to publish information that crosses the boundaries.

Twitter

• Twitter has its own Online Bullying help center for help and advice.
• Expansion of notification filters, allows users to filter the accounts from which they receive notifications. For example, they may not receive notifications from users without a profile picture.
• One effective step is also the option to block users. This prevents blocked accounts from posting, seeing your tweets, and reading your feed.
• Special Twitter Help Center will provide users with all necessary tools to protect personal data and tweets.

TikTok

• TikTok has produced a guide that helps to identify bullying behaviour and take measures against them.
• Configuring video privacy settings on a personal account, lets users choose who can view each video and restricts the upload of personal videos.
• The unwanted comments filter allows to create a list of unwanted keywords that will be blocked in the comments on videos or during live broadcasts to protect users from bullying.
• User filter allows you to choose who can add the Duet to a user video.
• Family settings keep users safe and support them in their creative endeavors without breaking personal boundaries.