A Consultant Psychiatrist, Dr Abiodun Adewuya, says unemployed youths in the country are likely to find themselves in a state of depression due to low self-esteem.
Adewuya, an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH), Ikeja, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
“An unemployed youth is likely to be one, who, when he wakes up in the morning there is nowhere to go.
“So, the first thing that will be affected will be his motivation.
“When an unemployed youth has a reduced motivation, what you are likely to have is a reduced self-esteem.
“So, when you have someone, who has a reduced motivation, leading to reduced self-esteem, these will have a link to reduced interaction, reduction in social lifestyle automatically it leads to depressed mood.
“Another one will be that for someone, who went to school, studied, got a degree and has not been able to get a job for quite a while, what you expect is a serious disappointment, not just in himself.
“He can be disappointed in either himself, his family or the society; it will automatically lead to low mood, which can be depression or it can lead him to react negatively against these disappointments.
“But it is very clear that more than half of people that finish from school stay at home for at least one year before getting any paid job.’’
The consultant, therefore, spoke of the need for government at all levels to meaningfully engage young people by creating employment opportunities.
“I think there should be an enabling environment for companies to grow and develop; without that, there will be nowhere to employ people.
“It is in production lines that you need people to get employed; if you have 10 companies, each of the company will employ 20 people, which means 200 people are already employed.
“So, you need to have an enabling environment to actually expand the number of companies that invest in Nigeria.
“How do you do that? You fix the electricity, fix the roads, basic things, you can be so sure that companies will come.
“So, have a centralised system that everybody can submit their CVs to; we need a strong employment directorate.
“I do not think we all need to have certificates to work; what I think is that, we should shift our education from basic university base to technical base, which means real handiwork.
“If you are trying to be a chemical engineer, you must have worked in that field; that is what we really need so that we will not just produce people with certificates who have nothing to do.’’(NAN)