How cultural taboos can affect mental healthcare: Nursing students may need support to challenge cultural misperceptions or unconscious bias about mental ill health (Obimah, 2024)

Obimah Emmanuel.

Mental Health Practice 2024;27(1): 16-17.

Growing up in a rural village in Nigeria, I thought of mental illness as a disease to be dreaded. Mental health conditions are often highly stigmatised in Africa and other developing countries, with understanding and attitudes influenced by traditional beliefs that mental ill health has supernatural causes and should be feared.