Breaking Barriers: Dr. Uju Nnubia’s Bold Push for Mental Health, Gender Equity in Nigeria

By Dr. Uju Nnubia

In Nigeria, mental health often remains on the margins of public conversation—overshadowed by stigma, cultural silence, and underinvestment. But Dr. Uju Ifeoma Nnubia, a leading educator and researcher in family and child studies, is determined to change that. Through her groundbreaking work, she is placing the mental well-being of women, children, and adolescents firmly on the national agenda.

Dr. Nnubia’s research exposes the mental health challenges hidden behind classroom walls, domestic spaces, and gendered expectations. Her findings reveal alarmingly high rates of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress among Nigerian youth and working mothers—populations typically overlooked in mainstream policy discussions.

One major strand of her work focuses on the rapidly evolving economic roles of Nigerian women. In a recent study conducted in Enugu State, nearly 75% of women surveyed were key contributors to household income, with many acting as sole breadwinners. This shift marks a significant transformation in family dynamics, as women across social classes increasingly take on financial responsibility—regardless of marital status.

However, this economic shift comes with psychological costs. Dr. Nnubia found that sole female breadwinners are five times more likely to experience work-family conflict (WFC) than their counterparts who share financial duties. This stress is magnified when household chores remain unequally distributed. In contrast, women in homes where responsibilities—both financial and domestic—are more evenly shared reported greater well-being and lower stress. Her findings lend support to the “resource drain” and “spillover” theories, which suggest that emotional and physical resources are stretched when support systems are lacking.

Surprisingly, higher levels of education or work experience did not guarantee better mental health outcomes for women. Instead, emotional support from stable relationships and shared household responsibilities played a more protective role. Women in polygamous marriages or those living apart from their spouses faced significantly poorer mental health, revealing the emotional toll of instability—both relational and structural.

Dr. Nnubia’s message is clear: mental health is not just a private matter—it’s deeply social, shaped by economic roles, cultural expectations, and family systems. She advocates for gender-sensitive workplace policies such as flexible work schedules, extended paid maternity leave, and better access to institutional mental health support for working women.

Her work extends well beyond adult populations. In recent studies involving undergraduate students in Nigeria, she uncovered an urgent youth mental health crisis. In Enugu State alone, 69% of undergraduates reported anxiety symptoms, 40.7% experienced depressive symptoms, and over 70% exhibited signs of languishing mental health. Contributing factors include academic stress, financial hardship, family pressures, and lack of sleep.

Dr. Nnubia also explored less conventional influences on youth mental health—such as celebrity worship. Among students, 63.4% were engaged in some form of celebrity worship, primarily of musicians. While entertainment-social and intense-personal worship styles had some positive effects on emotional and psychological well-being, borderline-pathological worship had harmful consequences. Interestingly, worshippers generally had better psychological health but poorer social well-being than their peers, with female students reporting worse social outcomes than males.

In another study, Dr. Nnubia examined the role of family presence in children’s well-being. Surveying 429 school-aged children in Nsukka, she found that those with emotionally and physically present parents had significantly better health-related quality of life. This finding underscores the urgent need for family-friendly policies that allow caregivers more time and flexibility to support their children’s development.

Currently, Dr. Nnubia is tackling a new and under-researched frontier: burnout among Nigerian schoolchildren. She warns that academic pressure, insecurity, and poverty are taking a serious psychological toll on children—yet few tools exist to measure or address this issue in African contexts. Her upcoming work will introduce a culturally responsive burnout inventory tailored to the realities of Nigerian and Black children, with the goal of embedding mental health assessment and support systems directly into schools.

Dr. Uju Nnubia’s work is not only timely—it is transformative. By centering culture, context, and lived experience, her research is challenging conventional narratives and catalyzing new conversations on mental health, gender equity, and family well-being. In doing so, she is helping build a more inclusive and mentally resilient Nigeria—one policy, one classroom, and one household at a time.

Dr. Uju Ifeoma Nnubia is a leading educator and researcher in family and child studies