Nigerian women and the weight of mental health

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year’s theme— “Take a Moment”—is a soft invitation to pause. To reflect. To check in on ourselves, on our loved ones, and on the silent struggles we carry through each day.

In a world that demands our constant doing, this theme urges us toward being. Toward asking: Am I really okay? Mental health awareness is a relatively new concept in many parts of the world, and Nigeria, even more so. For years, it was sidelined.

Only considered when things fell apart. It was what happened to “other people,” not to the woman keeping her home, raising her children, pushing through a demanding career, or surviving toxic relationships with quiet resolve.

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But as conversations deepen and visibility grows, it becomes clearer: the average woman is not exempt from mental distress—she is often the very face of it. Mental health has historically been minimised in spaces where women are expected to endure.

In cultures that prize strength and self-sacrifice, speaking about emotional fatigue is considered indulgent. You are told to pray, to push through, to remember others have it worse. Awareness, then, becomes a privilege—something accessible only after you have broken down.

For many women, even the language of mental health is foreign. We are taught how to function, not how to feel. We are taught how to fix others, not how to sit with our unravelling. But neglect is not resilience. And what we do not name, we cannot heal.

Women often carry the weight of invisible wars. They enter and remain in toxic relationships—romantic, platonic, familial—without realising the mental toll these connections extract. Emotional abuse is dressed as passion. Manipulation wears the mask of tradition.

Silence is mistaken for maturity. And too often, the emotional labour is endless: the fixing, the forgiving, the shrinking. Because mental health is overlooked, patterns of harm go unnoticed. You love someone and lose yourself in the process. You call it loyalty, not codependency.

You call it culture, not trauma. And slowly, your self-worth erodes under the pretence of keeping peace. It takes courage to pause and name what does not feel right—especially when love is involved. But recognition is liberation. The way you constantly apologize for existing, the exhaustion you feel around certain people, the way you are always the listener but never heard—these are not quirks. They are signs.

Mental health is not only about extreme breakdowns. It is in the quiet habits that drain you. In the hyper-independence that feels like safety. In the emotional numbness you call “getting by.” Awareness means learning to ask: Am I safe?

Am I seen? What do I become when I am around this person? This year’s theme is more than a slogan. It is an act of quiet rebellion. Take a moment—to breathe, to check in with yourself, to reflect on the version of you that shows up each day.

Take a moment to believe yourself.

Take a moment to choose yourself.

Take a moment to feel without guilt.

And above all, take a moment to think of yourself—not as someone to be fixed, but as someone to be loved. Being selfish is necessary sometimes. Especially for women who have been taught to disappear for the sake of others. Sometimes, you must choose yourself so you do not lose your individuality.

Self-preservation is not cruelty—it is clarity. This Mental Health Awareness Month, let us not only post infographics or quote therapists—we must live the awareness. We must extend it to the everyday: to the friend who always says “I’m fine,” to the woman who holds everyone up but herself, to our mothers, sisters, and selves.

Women are not inherently stronger than pain. We are just more practised in hiding it. But strength, true strength, is in choosing softness. In setting boundaries. In saying no. In leaving. In being seen.

Fatimah Yusuf Usman wrote from PRNigeria Centre, Abuja. She can be reached via: [email protected].