Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. Exploring the practice of counseling through technology. Here’s your host, Clay Cockrell.
Clay Cockrell: Hello and welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. Thank you for joining us as we explore the changes that are coming to the field of psychotherapy, particularly how we are beginning to do more and more counseling via online platforms which is really expanding our ability to connect with people all over the world. I’m really excited about today’s guest.
Here’s a testament to the power of Twitter. Initially, I was really reluctant to join Twitter because, well, I didn’t understand it. I guess to some extent I still don’t but I’m learning. If you know anything about me, you know I’m going to dive in and figure it out as I go. By the way, if you want to connect with me on Twitter, I am @oncounselling, O-N-C-O-U-N-S-E-L-L-I-N-G. Spelled with two Ls. Follow us. So far, I have 1996 followers, so close to 2000. How about them apples? I’m told by my young friend Nathan Harper who will be a senior in high school this year that it’s “Not bad.” So, high praise coming from a seventeen year old.
Anyway, one of the people I ended up connecting with is Funmilade Taiwo. The more I got to know him, the more I realized I have to have this guy on the podcast. He is based in Nigeria and working to end mental health stigma in Nigeria and all of Africa. Educated as a psychologist in Canada. He’s now back home and creating ways to Nigerians to access mental health care. One of the ways is the creation of the directory PsyndUp at PsyndUp.com. It’s PsyndUp as P-S-Y-N-D. Psy like psychology then ND up, PsyndUp up. It’s a lot of play on words and sounds and meanings and it’s really cool. So PsyndUp.com. This directory creates an online presents for Nigerian mental health providers and helps clients who are looking for care to easily find it and it’s not been done before. It’s the Psychology Today of Nigeria. We go to details during the interview but I just have to say how impressed I am by this youngman and his passion to impact his world in such a positive way. The site is not launched yet but he’s working with experts in Canada and the UK to put together a site that is going to change how mental health care is obtained in Africa. Think about that. It’s just fascinating and I hope that we’re able to show a spotlight on the work that he is doing. At the call, we talked about collaborating and perhaps patterning to bring some of the Nigerian professionals on to our directory here at onlinecounseling.com. So, stay tuned. So, here we go, all the way from Nigeria, Funmilade Taiwo of PsyndUp.com.
Welcome to the Online Counselling Podcast. My name is Clay Cockrell and I’m thrilled to have on the show today, Funmilade Taiwo.
Funmilade Taiwo: Thank you for that.
Clay: Yes, absolutely. We’ve been practicing that name. But you have a real passion for mental health awareness and mental health care in Nigeria and Africa. Welcome to the show.
Funmilade: Thank you. Thank you. I’m very happy to be here. More than honored to be honest, but thank you.
Clay: I’m honored to talk with you. So give us a little history of you and how you came to mental healthcare. I know you studied in Canada. Tell us a little bit about you.
Funmilade: I did my undergraduate degree in psychology at University of Toronto in Canada. I really did not think I was going to go to mental healthcare. I started off just because I thought psychology was interesting. Took a first year course. Learned about a whole bunch of different fields of psychology from psyche and the law to biological psyche to social psyche. I really, really love social psyche. I thought you know what? Maybe I could be a social psychologist. And then I took cognitive psyche. I thought you know what? Maybe I’d be a cognitive psychologist. I just kept on bouncing on from course to course until I took abnormal psychology. That is what really guided me into this. Learning about different psychological disorders and how they affect behavior and also taking some more biological psyche courses. Really got me to understand that our behaviors, we tend to blame certain people’s behavior on them when really it’s guided by our biology. Often times, these abnormal behaviors we see more than often is not really our fault. That’s the message I really try to pass across the people that whatever it is that someone maybe going through. I maybe acting normally quote on quote but that’s as a result of my brain pathways acting as they should. I have no control over that. It happens because it’s happening.
Someone who may be experiencing depression or anxiety is experiencing fluctuation in the neurotransmitters and the chemicals in their brain and that. I just find it quite necessary that more people should understand that. That really spurred on my dream to be a psychologist and to work in a mental health field. I finished my undergraduate degree, I wasn’t’ sure what I wanted to do but I came back to Nigeria, found myself working with children with autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders and it’s been a fantastic experience because I never thought I’d be able to be where I am right now just one year after graduating university. It’s allowed me to learn a lot of clinical skills, to learn a lot of administrative skills as well. I believe everyone need those skills no matter how minor you think they maybe. But it’s also given me the freedom to create the platform that I’m working on right now because it exposed me to different deficits in the mental health system in Nigeria and areas of improvement. So this alone is one area of improvement but I’m taking it on as my project trying to provide a service that is very, very, very, very much needed.
Clay: That’s a great segue. So you are the founder of PsyndUp.com. Tell me about PsyndUp and how you came up with this idea and what is it?
Funmilade: As part of my job, currently we hosts mental health awareness events and we hosted one in April and I invited a psychiatrist from McMaster University in Canada. He’s a Nigerian but he works in Canada. So he came down. We had a discussion with the field and mental health professionals. Just talking to about 30 to 40 people. More of senior people about average age I’d say like 30. It was just an open space to talk and people brought about all their different issues they had especially with mental health and it was quite shocking to see that a lot more people than we thought would want to talk about mental health issues in a society where people are so hush hush about these things and it’s quite stigmatized.
In that discussion, the question was raised and it was basically so how do we access mental healthcare. One of the mental health professionals there who works in Lagbus Nigeria said himself, we’re not even online. You have to really, really search for these guys. I mean the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, they don’t post contact details. They may have names, but that’s about it. And then you may search a name but not find anything about that person. That really gave me the idea to say, “Why can’t we have the service?” I’ve seen no reason why it can’t work here. We’re already moving towards a more technologically controlled age. We might as well move it in this field as well. The health field is one, especially in Nigeria, there’s a lot of startups trying to advance the health field with technology and I really really really believe that that’s the future. Then on, the idea came out. I spoke to a few of the mental professionals that I will work closely and I just see some guidance to go ahead with it.
Clay: So this is a directory that will, if someone in Nigerian, is looking for a therapist, a psychiatrist, some mental healthcare. This is going to be a service to where all that’s going to be listed out for them.
Funmilade: Yes.
Clay: So is this going to be advertising for face to face counseling or online counseling or both?
Funmilade: Currently, the model is for face to face counseling. I’d like to get us somewhere where we can get online counseling here. But it’s currently, at this stage we got what we can do right now. Just a referral basis. You find this person, contact them on your own and you get your face to face counseling.
Clay: What you’re developing here in the States, we have called Psychology Today.
Funmilade: Yes. Yes.
Clay: It’s a directory of all the therapists per zip codes. You’re doing that for Nigerian therapists so that people can access them and one stop shop they can find them and connect. Okay.
Funmilade: I’m very, very familiar with Psychology Today when I was researching ideas on how to go ahead with this, that was one of the websites I was directed to. Goodtherapy.org as well is one. Findatherapist.com. They are all doing the same things. It’s working quiet well. This is extensive. You click on a profile and you have their specialties, their academic background, you have the areas of treatment. Those things not only put them online and make them more accessible but it makes the field of mental healthcare and even the profession more transparent. I think that’s really what we work to break the stigma. You see that these people are regular people just like you. Like they’re not quacks locked up in the psychiatric facility and everyone believes that they’re only working with crazy people. It’s not that. We really need to get that. Sorry about that. Can you hear?
Clay: Yeah. I heard that. What was that?
Funmilade: It’s a chopper, I think.
Clay: That’s great. See, normally people are familiar with the New York sounds of the podcast. Now, we’re getting some Nigerian sounds. I love it.
Funmilade: It’s different. Yes. Primarily, the service is connecting people with mental healthcare. But behind that, there’s also a lot of barriers that I really want this service to break and making the mental healthcare feel more as one of them.
Clay: So tell me, you were experienced multiculturally being in Canada for several years, getting your education there. Tell me about the difference in the acceptance or the access to care for mental health.
Funmilade: During my undergraduate career, there was the health and counseling center at UFT. They hosted monthly different campaigns on maybe proper sex tips and just like a whole variety of themes. But one thing that they always focus on was mental healthcare. They had a group specifically for mental health awareness on campus and they were always running campaigns and videos. There was a kid on my soccer who’s a really good friend of mine who I had no idea he was living with bipolar depression. No one on the team knew. We all played soccer together for about two or three years. Until I saw he was a part of this society and then he posted a video talking about it. That I think was another pivotal moment in my decision to work in this field because I saw that there’s nothing wrong with him. It’s a condition fair enough and he’s taking the right treatment approaches. He’s doing the right thing to live a more fulfilling and healthy life, and if we can do that, why not. I was exposed to that. I was exposed to our professors, psyche professors who always told us if you need to talk, my door is open.
I hold counseling sessions and a good amount of my friends in my psyche classes were using this counseling session. They testified that these things were helpful. It takes away even the idea that psychology is a healthcare field so we should always be in a hospital or clinical setting. In school, your mental health is quite important to your level of excellence or how well you do in school. If you’re struggling with a certain course and you end up failing, people are going to blame that on you. Maybe you didn’t study hard enough. You weren’t attending classes. But you might have been going through some quite traumatic in your life at that point in time. Being exposed to the right care and support and friends around you and resources will probably have been a great help.
Clay: So it sounds like Canada it was normalized. It was accepted. Contrast that for me with Nigeria.
Funmilade: Here it’s almost as if you’re saying you need to talk about something makes you weak or makes you unable to cope with life beause life here is quite stressful and I think we Nigerians pride ourselves from being resilient to the extent that it can be harmful to ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with being resilient but there’s also nothing wrong with understanding once weaknesses and taking the right steps to work on those weaknesses. It can be unhealthy climate here often times. Traffic, I can just… People work in different parts of the city as opposed to where they live. You maybe up at 4am trying to get to work by 8am because if you leave your house maybe 30 minutes later, you’re not going to get to work at ten. You’re up from four. Work doesn’t release you until about eight and you still have to journey back home. Get home at ten eleven. Take care of your family and be up at four again. That cycle is just one aspect of the stressors that we live within. How that can greatly impact people’s mental health, and that being ignored alone, people maybe walking around with symptoms of depression, symptoms of anxiety. Mood disorders that are greatly overlooked and have great impact on people’s economic standing in society because maybe if you’re dealing with this you are unable to work as hard or get a better paying job and take care of your family. I think it’s affecting our lives in so many different ways that we’re very unaware of.
Clay: Absolutely.
Funmilade: The culture of not sharing and all that it’s quite detrimental to our healthcare.
Clay: It sounds like it’s your goal to normalize, to remove the stigma to say, “Hey there is help out there. This is a normal thing to have depression, anxiety.” Do you think within the culture, in your experience, that it’s changing that people are accessing care?
Funmilade: I do very much believe that it’s changing especially among the youth especially those that have been exposed to other cultures who see that things can be done differently. There’s nothing wrong with doing things differently. Our culture is also very much religion based. So spirituality takes the forefront in our lives. So most of these things are blamed on spiritual causes and attacks from family members in the village or just hose sort of scenarios. Because we put the blame on spiritual causes, we also look at religion or look to religion for help. There’s nothing wrong with that. But at the same time, I believe we need to bridge the gap between health and religion, science and religion so to say and find a middle ground and see how those two fields can work here in the society to really foster a healthier Nigeria.
Clay: This is the Online Counseling Podcast, and your directory is for face to face counseling t least at this time. Would this be an option for Nigerians to use online counseling to be able to connect to the air, a platform very similar to Skype. Is the technology there? Would this be able to help them normalize therapy, to be able to talk with someone in a private home?
Funmilade: I think that online counseling and the privacy that it offers would be, become useful because another reason I think, I believe most people don’t access mental healthcare and I can say this because from the few discussions that I’ve been in, this is one of the answers that does come up is because of the fear being stigmatized. People often want anonymity and that’s what PsyndUp also aims to provide. You can find the service. You can find a mental health specialist in the safety of your own home, in the privacy of your own home. No one has to know. If you need that, we want to provide that. I think online counseling would definitely be a great addition. But we would need is better technology. The technology that would give us, that we’re definitely moving towards a more technologically advanced stage of the internet. The internet service is getting better. It could be better, but for online counseling will definitely need a great, great, great service providers. Hopefully in the future, we can get that so online counseling can thrive here.
Clay: Yeah. Yeah. So, tell me about the field. It’s different and I talked with people from all over the world. It’s different how psychology, counseling, social work, how to regulate it in different parts. Do you need a license? Are you credentialed in Nigeria? What’s the field plaque there?
Funmilade: Let me start off with psychiatry. There is a regulatory board of psychiatrists under medicines. So, all psychiatrists being medical doctors first have to be registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria and also the Nigerian Medical Association. They are registered under there. Then for psychologists, what I have learned recently is that a lot of people with under graduate degrees and maybe have masters in counseling or masters in clinical psychology call themselves psychologist and offer services based on these credentials that aren’t exactly accurate because to be called psychologist you need a doctorate degree. Be it PhD or SID, it’s quite important that you have that. You may have the experience but our society conditioned us to how to bias for authority and credibility based on education. Not even only that, I just think it’s quite unfair to call yourself something you’re not. That in itself I think is one of the major issues. It just doesn’t stem from people’s dishonesty. There’s no regulatory board for psychologists here or clinical psychologists.
I guess there’s no structure around what they need to have to be called a clinical psychologist. So maybe we’re just realizing I can do this, I’m going to do it. So, there’s that. There’s the Medical Rehabilitation Therapists Board of Nigeria which oversees speech therapist, occupational therapist, physical therapist. For speech therapist and occupational therapist who tend to work with children with neurodevelopmental disorders, they have to be registered. They’re really cracking down on that right now. I was speaking with them recently. They told me they’re taking serious action to ensure that anybody who’s hired as one of those professions is properly licensed and properly registered.
Clay: So, someone could call themselves a psychotherapist, a counselor, a psychologist, it’s not it may be unethical, but it’s illegal. They could have even a bachelor’s degree and provide services in Nigeria. Is that accurate?
Funmilade: That is accurate.
Clay: Do you think there are a lot of providers. Because in India, the statistics are there’s one mental health professional for every four hundred thousand people. There’s massive need to there. What are the numbers you’re seeing in your field in Nigeria?
Funmilade: There was this, God I think… Let me see if I get this correct. It was about maybe two hundred registered psychiatrists in Nigeria. That’s just for the field of psychiatry alone. With the population of about 160 million and growing people in Nigeria, the ratio is definitely not favorable at all. It’s maybe one to… I can’t. I don’t want to say something not accurate but it’s definitely not favorable either way. We do need people appreciating the field in mental healthcare and getting into and getting the right kind of accreditations so that they are providing the right kind of service.
Clay: Right. So that’s psychiatrist. Counselors. Are there plenty of counselors or are the counselors that you’re talking to are they overwhelmed with the need?
Funmilade: I can’t say for sure. I know of very few counselors who are properly licensed to say. There’s probably a whole lot more who are calling themselves counselors or therapists without a proper training. They may have taken an online course on counseling or read a book on counseling and they therefore decide to go ahead and do this. So that is quite discomforting to think about it that way. I just think as I said due to lack of structure and control over what should be done and what needs to be done in that field.
Clay: Tell me about PsyndUp. Is it launched yet or are you in the process of getting people to sign up for PsyndUp?
Funmilade: In the process of getting the website up, and because the website is not up yet, we can’t, people aren’t physically signing up. But we are definitely spreading knowledge about it to get at least get the name out there. We are also working on a blog. The blog features is supposed to work on breaking the stigma on mental health basically by sharing real life experiences with Nigerians who are dealing with mental health issues, who are already taking steps to deal with this mental health issues, so with treatment therapy, maybe medication just to normalize it and demystify therapy. Just make people see it’s okay, it’s normal. Really nothing wrong with it. Just do what you have to do and get the right kind of help. So that’s what the blog aspect aims to do.
Clay: Wow! We’ve been talking about Nigeria but your kind of field of focus is all of Africa. Do you feel like Nigeria is behind Africa in general or maybe in the forefront?
Funmilade: Of mental healthcare? I wouldn’t say. I’d probably say we’re all around the same stage right now. There’s groups of people trying to spread awareness. I see that just being online, on social media, you follow trends, you see small groups of people and different countries trying to combat this epidemic so to say. Ignorance about mental healthcare is harmful to the world. I would say we are probably all at par with each other. I see we’re all moving towards a time where everyone would be able to appreciate it slow. It’s coming along.
Clay: That’s wonderful news. But a journey throughout the world, I think. Even here in the States there is stigma for mental healthcare. But I think voices like yours saying this, we need to have access, we need to normalize, we need to remove the stigma, and telling the stories of people whose lives can be better because they access trained, credentialed, educated therapists. That’s wonderful. Congratulations. Okay, so anything else we haven’t talked about you want to make sure that we our listeners are aware of?
Funmilade: I would say just look out for PsyndUp. Look out for more advancements in mental healthcare in Nigeria. There’s a lot of young likeminded youth just like me, young likeminded youth. Likeminded youth just like me who are really trying to make a difference. I think I honestly truly believe that we will make this difference we’re all setting out to do. Just look out for that. Nigeria is greatly developing its technological field, the healthcare field is jumping in our mat. So there’s going to be great advancements. Just watch out.
Clay: PsyndUp is coming. Look for this. Absolutely. I’m so happy I got to meet you. Funmilade, thank you. You are an inspiration and I wish you all the best with this.
Funmilade: Thank you so much, Clay. Thank you for the opportunity.