Psychotherapy Training in Nigeria

The scarcity of properly trained psychotherapists in Nigeria, on the one hand, and the increasing incidence of emotional problems resulting from poverty and underdevelopment, child abuse and neglect, trauma resulting from different forms of crime and abuse of human dignity, insecurity problems like terrorism, insurgency, kidnapping and hijacking, increasing stress-provoking lifestyles, tribal and national wars and conflicts, westernization and globalisation, and the HIV/AIDS pandemic, different forms of cancer, and all sorts of abuse of human dignity on the other hand, call for urgent need for establishment of institutions for formal psychotherapy training in Nigeria. This paper highlights not only the above lacuna but also describes the important aspects of psychotherapy training in the Western world. It went further to describe current efforts being made in Nigeria to establish a world-class tertiary institution, the School of Psychotherapy and Health Sciences (SPHS), which takes it lead from modern psychotherapy training programmes in Austria. The SPHS in Nigeria has also been affiliated Sigmund Freud University, Austria. Students from SPHS will be trained by qualified staff from Nigeria and from Austria, and they will be properly equipped with psychotherapeutic skills that will enable them to address the emotional problems of Nigerians, in which ever work-setting they find themselves. They will also be registerable the World Council for Psychotherapy and with other psychotherapy organisations world-wide.