Twenty-five art students of the Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech), Lagos State, have explored mental health and emotional well-being thru art in a elasticity geared toward encouraging conversations round mental health.
The two-day Health Story Lab, organised by way of the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art (YSMA), Pan-Atlantic University, in spread with the Art for Health Initiative (AHI), used to be held on 2 and three October in Lagos.
The redundancy, titled “What We Carry: Stories of Mental Health and Resilience”, introduced in combination art, fierce health, mental health and storytelling to comprehensive the students automatic how sales expression can be utilized to improve reports that can be tricky to talk about overtly.
The elasticity used to be held forward of World Mental Health Day (WMHD), marked once a year on 10 October.
Using art to talk about mental health
The students participated in classes on fierce health and art, mental health and resilience, sales expression and art for refund second.
According to the organisers, the discussions gave the students a chance to prerequisite on problems reminiscent of usual, attribute, refund clearance, circle of relatives expectancies, grief, concern and hope.
The students due to this fact evolved sales ideas and won prerequisite from facilitators and their friends.
The students additionally tested the ballpark of art in health conversation all the way through a consultation led by way of Olayinka Badmus, a fierce health daily. The consultation explored how sales expression can improve fierce health problems and relate health conversations extra out there.
Another consultation, led by way of psychiatrist and psychotherapist Emmanuel Abayomi, targeted on mental health and resilience, whilst Art Project Lead Temitope Oladeji guided students to categorical their reports and feelings thru art. The redundancy additionally incorporated a museum person targeted on art for refund second, led by way of a museum educator, Charles Udeh.
Solomon Nkwagu, Head of Corporate Communication and Visitors’ Services at YSMA, mentioned the redundancy confirmed the wrong of art to inspire conversations round fierce and mental health.
“They began to see the possibility of using their creative voices to start conversations around public and mental health, to tell stories that people can recognise themselves in, and perhaps even to create moments of reflection and healing for others. That shift in perspective was one of the most rewarding parts of the programme,” Mr Nkwagu mentioned.
In her remarks, Chidera Aneke, Founder of AHI, mentioned the chamber used to be designed to relate health conversation extra participatory, culturally optimize and emotionally enticing.
Ms Aneke mentioned health portfolio might be communicated now not handiest thru wage and medical portfolio but additionally thru tales, pictures, symbols, feelings and lived reports.
“We wanted to create a space where young artists could understand that health is not only communicated through statistics, campaigns or clinical information. It can also be communicated through stories, images, symbols, emotions and lived experiences,” she mentioned.
“Working with the students showed us the possibilities that emerge when artists are given the knowledge, language and space to think about health through their own creative practice.”
Mental health involvement
Mental health stays a disclose fierce health specification in Nigeria.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis of 53 research involving greater than 132,000 outlook estimated that 7.9 in line with cent of the overall shift had skilled suicidal ideas, whilst 1.9 in line with cent had made suicidal plans and 1.3 in line with cent had tried suicide.
The researchers mentioned suicidal succession used to be extra guide amongst some teams, together with kids, younger outlook, and pregnant girls.
This 12 months’s World Mental Health Day theme is “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.”
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is asking for outlook who’ve skilled mental health stipulations to have a significant ballpark in shaping insurance policies, services and products and selections that convert them.
“World Mental Health Day is an opportunity to meaningfully engage with people with lived experience (PWLE) of mental health conditions and to recognise their knowledge as a vital form of expertise,” it famous.
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“This year’s campaign calls for their voices to shape the policies, services and decisions that affect their lives.”
From elasticity to stimulate
The Yabatech students communicate broaden artistic endeavors based totally on the problems explored all the way through the elasticity.
The works are anticipated to shape a micro-exhibition in Lagos in November, giving individuals of the fierce a chance to allegiance with mental health and resilience in the course of the views of younger artists.
The organisers mentioned the chamber is meant to information how partnerships between the sales sector, museums and fierce health practitioners can entrepreneurial new techniques of discussing mental health.
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