Lagos Students Use Art to Talk About Mental Health

Twenty-five art students from the Yaba College of Technology, Yabatech, in Lagos State have explored mental health and emotional well-being through art in a workshop aimed at sparking conversations around mental health.

The two-day Health Story Lab took place on 2 and 3 October in Lagos. It was organized by the Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, YSMA, and Pan-Atlantic University, along with the Art for Health Initiative, AHI.

The program, titled “What We Carry: Stories of Mental Health and Resilience,” combined art, public health, mental health, and storytelling. It helped students see how creative expression can express experiences that are hard to talk about openly.

The workshop was held before World Mental Health Day, which is celebrated every year on 10 October.

Using Art to Talk About Mental Health

During the workshop, the students took part in sessions on public health and art, mental health and resilience, and creative expression for social change.

The organizers said the discussions allowed students to think about issues like stress, uncertainty, social pressure, family expectations, grief, fear, and hope.

The students then created their own concepts and received feedback from facilitators and their classmates. They also looked at how art can help communicate health messages during a session led by Olayinka Badmus, a public health strategist. This session focused on how creative expression can make health topics easier to understand.

Another session, led by psychiatrist and psychotherapist Emmanuel Abayomi, dealt with mental health and resilience. Art Project Lead Temitope Oladeji helped students express their feelings and experiences through art. The program also included a museum tour about art for social change, which was led by museum educator Charles Udeh.

Solomon Nkwagu, Head of Corporate Communication and Visitors’ Services at YSMA, said the program highlighted how art can help start talks about public and mental health.

“They began to see the possibility of using their creative voices to start conversations around public and mental health, to tell stories that people can recognize themselves in, and perhaps even to create moments of reflection and healing for others. That shift in perspective was one of the most rewarding parts of the program,” Mr Nkwagu said.

In her speech, Chidera Aneke, Founder of AHI, said the initiative aimed to make health communication more engaging and relevant.

Ms Aneke explained that health information could be shared not just through numbers and medical terms but also through stories, images, symbols, emotions, and personal experiences.

“We wanted to create a space where young artists could understand that health is not only communicated through statistics, campaigns or clinical information. It can also be communicated through stories, images, symbols, emotions and lived experiences,” she said.

“Working with the students showed us the possibilities that emerge when artists are given the knowledge, language, and space to think about health through their own creative practice.”

Mental Health Burden

Mental health is a serious public health issue in Nigeria. A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis of 53 studies, involving over 132,000 people, found that 7.9 percent of the general population had experienced suicidal thoughts, while 1.9 percent had made plans to commit suicide and 1.3 percent had attempted it.

The researchers noted that suicidal behavior was more common among certain groups, including adolescents, young people, and pregnant women.

This year’s World Mental Health Day theme is “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.” The World Health Organization is urging people with mental health conditions to take part in shaping policies and decisions that affect them.

“World Mental Health Day is an opportunity to genuinely engage with people with lived experiences of mental health conditions and to recognize their knowledge as an important form of expertise,” it stated.

From Workshop to Exhibition

The Yabatech students will create artworks based on the topics discussed during the workshop.

The artworks are expected to form a small exhibition in Lagos in November, allowing the public to engage with mental health and resilience through the eyes of young artists.

The organizers said the initiative aims to show how partnerships between artists, museums, and public health professionals can lead to new ways of talking about mental health.