Mental Health: US-Based Cameroonian Therapist To Offer Free Treatment

A week hardly goes by without news of violence, aggressions or other forms of mental disorder reported in Cameroon. Memories are still fresh of a college student who stabbed his teacher to death in Government High School Nkolbison in Yaounde and many other cases abound around the country. Drug and alcohol abuse is increasingly getting rampant in different age groups and sectors in Cameroon. 

“Substance Use Disorders and Mental Health Disorders have increased student violence and aggression in schools. It continues to get worse, rampant and the situation dire; our communities and children are being lost to drugs, alcohol and undiagnosed or misunderstood mental health issues…,” says Therese Shalo-Fuh, a US-based Cameroonian Therapist/Counsellor of substance use disorders, behavioural health, and mental health.

From her research and workshops organised in 2016 in Cameroon, during which she provided free counselling services, it emerged that there is an increase in prevalence of substance misuse in youth between the ages of 10 and 28. Shalo-Fuh attributes the rampant misuse of the illicit substances to the illegal importation of drugs into the country such as heroin, cocaine, tramadol, tramol, MDMA and Shisha (hookah), amongst others.  “Deadly alcohol mixes are being locally produced and sold as well as imported liquor that has increasingly caused a compulsive and continuous use despite negative consequences within Cameroonian communities,” the founder of ‘Be The Exception Counseling Foundation’ laments.