BY DAYO ADESULU & KELECHUKWU IRUOMA

IN a quest to reduce suicide ideation, suicide, use of alcohol and harmful substances, Professor Amos Alao of Covenant University has called for the provision of counselling services in the educational system and in the community at large.

Delivering a lecture at the 37th public lecture of Covenant University entitled: Fostering Psychological Adjustment: Pathways to National Wellness, Prof. Alao said “counselling services in the educational system need to be strengthened, beginning from primary school to our secondary schools and culminating in our tertiary institutions.”

He said: “provision of counselling services must also be available for our out-of-school youths at community levels supported by government at local, state and national levels. This will address the problems posed by unfocused kids who can easily become dangers to themselves and the community in which they live.”

The Professor of Counselling and Psychology calls for psychological adjustment and wellness at all levels in the society. According to him, “psychological adjustment and wellness needs to be made at the individual, family, group and community levels, which will serve as the building block for national wellness.

He said the lecture was intended to: “discuss a ‘bottom-up’ approach of exploring national wellness, beginning at the individual level of human existence, to associations at the marital, family and community levels and how these associations and relationships have consequences for the larger and more complex associations, relationships and interactions in the larger human polity known as the nation.”