Policy Issues and Challenges in Teaching Sexual and Reproductive Health to Adolescent Girls with Mental Disabilities in Nigeria: The Way Forward

Abstract

Mental health is one of the major health challenges of the twenty-first century. People living with mental health conditions suffer the greatest discrimination demeaning their personality and they are perpetually restrained from living normal lives. Being mentally disabled constitutes an insurmountable illness in a society like Nigeria not to describe the situation of an adolescent girl with that condition. A girl child in Nigeria and Africa as a whole is an endangered species based on some societal factors affecting their lives. It is indeed a fact that people living with mental health conditions have the right to make decisions about their lives, including their treatment. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities creates a new pattern for mental health law, which is shifting focus from institutional care to community-based treatment which is more participatory. Dissemination of issues of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) to adolescent girls living with mental disability becomes a hydra monster because of the environment of birth. Traditionally adolescents do not have a voice but are subject to control as stipulated by the society. On the other hand mental health issues in Nigeria are seen as metaphysical which naturally defy orthodox medicine. The issue of teaching sexual and reproductive health to persons with disabilities has been problematic and still is in many societies. It is even more so in Nigeria where girls with disabilities have fallen victim to sexual abuse and many have been impregnated even by close family members and trusted ones who take advantage of their vulnerabilities. Most of the time, these incidents are covered up and the cycle continues. In order to protect these vulnerable adolescents, awareness is key and the mode of transmission is to teach them their sexual and reproductive health rights and to extend this advocacy to their caregivers. In Nigeria there is lack of enabling policy and experts in the specific area of SRH are not looking in that direction. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this chapter seeks to examine the existing legal framework and policies if any on this issue in Nigeria, focusing on adolescent girls with mental disabilities. It discusses the nature and state of the Nigerian society with regards to the adolescent girl child with disabilities in Nigeria, the importance of a legal framework and policies, the many challenges, the best practices from some developed countries and suggests the way forward. The chapter takes a critical look at these important yet often neglected and not so recognised citizens of the society and their peculiar problems. It seeks to find a way whereby policies could provide the enabling atmosphere for the protection of these girls through the teaching of sexual and reproductive health and how this can be done.