The Boko Haram insurgency may have increased the population of mental and neuropsychiatric patients in the and drug abuse patterns in the region.

“There is a changing pattern of drugs and substance abuse,” the Medical Director of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Maiduguri, Dr. Ibrahim Abdullahi Wakawa, told Daily Trust in Maiduguri.

He added, “Newer drugs are coming into the paraphernalia of drug use in the region,” he said, adding “some of these drugs were alien to this country; they were being used in northern Cameroon and southern parts of Chad and Niger Republic. Because of the breakdown of social order during the period of the insurgency, coupled with the absence of drug use control, probably due to the inability of drug law enforcement agencies to operate effectively in the region during the insurgency, such drugs came into the country and became easily accessible to the populace.”

This situation, he said, raised the population of drug abuse-related mental and psychiatric cases.

“This is a major issue of concern,” he asserted.

Dr. Wakawa said the population of patients attending the hospital had increased by about 35 percent.

“At the beginning of the insurgency, between 2009 and 2014, there was a reduction in the number of patients we were seeing; and this could actually be adduced to the fact that many people were displaced, and because of the deteriorating security, accessing mental healthcare could have been very difficult” he said. (Daily Trust)