Behind Closed Doors: Why Nigerians Still Whisper About Therapy

When Tobi first told his mother he was seeing a therapist, she asked, carefully, if everything was alright at work, as though therapy were something you turned to only after a crisis had already announced itself. He is not alone in that experience. Across Nigeria, mental health support still carries a particular kind of silence, one that is less about denial than about vocabulary. Many families simply do not have the language for 'I am struggling but functioning,' so they reach for the nearest available explanation: spiritual attack, overthinking, or simply a phase that prayer will resolve.