Adeoye Oyewole
Consultant Psychiatrist
adeoyewole2000@yahoo.com
One of the most important festivals celebrated in the developed societies that can be compared to the way Africans do is the Thanksgiving Day Festival. The event, no doubt, arouses curiosity.
Thanksgiving Day is a national holiday celebrated in Canada, the United States of America, some of the Caribbean islands and Liberia. It started as a day set aside for the purpose of giving thanks for the blessings of another year’s harvest and that of the preceding year.
Similarly named festival holidays are celebrated in Germany and Japan. Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday of October in Canada and on the fourth Thursday of November in the Unites State. Celebration of the festival takes place in other countries around the same period of the year.
Prayers and special thanksgiving ceremonies characterise the celebrations in a general sense, just as it is done during the African New Yam Festival.
The Thanksgiving Day tradition originated from the English reformation era. It was celebrated in response to events that the Puritans viewed as special acts of providence. The compelling narrative of the Thanksgiving Day is victory (whether in the past , present or the future ) over social, political and economic problems.
Nigeria is undergoing economic upheavals that have dislocated the social life of the citizenry. Meeting the basic survival needs of feeding, shelter and security is threatened because the earning power has depreciated. School fees, accommodation demands, basic survival, transportation and feeding are threatened. This has invariably impacted negatively on the mental health of the people.
When one considers the mental health challenges across life span, one finds that it is enormous and burdensome. Reports of suicide, intimate partner violence, homicide, violent clashes, armed robbery, kidnapping and cult killing are all linked to the mental health challenges of the populace.
Several factors enumerated earlier have contributed to this present state of hopelessness and frustration occasioned by the economic recession. Unfortunately, the institutions that should provide support and succour to the people lack creative leadership. Certain steps could be taken to help the mind to function adequately and in a wholesome manner, especially within the circles of influential individuals and communities that require certain dispositions and skills to navigate this critical period.
One of them is the practice of thanksgiving at individual, family and national levels for what nature has graciously bequeathed to us and the good things of life that we have enjoyed in the past, as well as the potential benefits in the challenges we are facing. This exercise does not intend to disregard the present circumstance and attendant challenges but to be thankful, in spite of them. Thanksgiving is the celebration of the assurance that the providence we have enjoyed in the past will stretch into the future. Nigerians will need to learn to transit from mere religiosity and get deeply spiritual as their relationship with God must begin to count for them mentally, socially and physically.
The successful countries of the world celebrate the Thanksgiving Day as a product of their dynamic and pragmatic relationship with God. No one can effectively thank God for providence and sustenance of the future without having solid faith in God.
We should avoid sick religiosity and get into deep spiritual principles that will make our faith strong enough to give birth to thanksgiving, even in the face of things we strongly desire that we have not seen but only have the assurance and conviction that they are done as we navigate through our challenges.
We must find a way to garner and acquire inspiration in our worship to tangibly affect our mental state positively rather than giving heed to negative and pessimistic thoughts that can only lead to depressive illness, suicide and even encourage drug abuse.
It is about time that African religious practices began to count for us in a way that produces a strong, dynamic and resourceful mindset that will keep us stable and grant us efficient and effective problem- solving skills as we sustain a positive mental health attitude.
Our thoughts need to be controlled and guarded not only when we must visit the psychotherapists, but also at the individual, family and national levels. We need to consciously generate positive thoughts from our religious affiliations and make our minds active and resourceful as we contend with the present circumstances. Thoughts produce moods and could make it worse in a way that affects our biopsychosocial functioning.
We are all stakeholders in the recovery of our economy and social prosperity. Mental capital is the most important resource in this recovery agenda, which is the mental well-being that has served as substrate for positive psychological forces that consummate in economic productivity. Thanksgiving, therefore, is a crucial embodiment of the therapy we need as a nation to move out of this menace shifting from the personal level to the national level so that we can invariably have our own Thanksgiving Day to celebrate as a nation.
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