When we talk about mental health, I feel like it is a topic that most African parents have to be educated on, because some of them still do not get how serious something like that can be.
As a matter of fact, if your parents are as old school as mine, you might fight them scolding you when you talk to them about depression, than them trying to encourage or support you to do better.
Some few months back, I remember feeling at my lowest, like nothing was working out for me anymore, so I had sent my dad a text, telling him of how depressed I was and how sometimes, I get really crazy suicidal thoughts. To his credit, he had sent me a long voice note, encouraging me to take things easy on myself and basically just being a good father.
Fast forward to when I eventually traveled back home last December. Somehow, while we were having a conversation, we got on the mental health issue, and he immediately remembered my text. That was when he started talking about how when he first read that text, he was just looking at me (which is a saying Nigerian parents use when they're almost trying to say that they were eyeballing someone).
When I tried to explain to him further, he shut me up immediately, reminding me that a child of God doesn't harm himself and all that. Now, while what he was saying might be true, I quickly reminded him that he was making one very deadly mistake, the same mistake most parents make that forces their children not to want to open up to them anymore and just do something crazy when the time comes.
I had told him that although what I felt at that moment was temporary, there were young people out there who really go through these things and end up doing the worst to themselves, sometimes just because the people they were supposed to open up to chose to ignore them or not pay enough attention to them.
Sadly, we couldn't finish the conversation, as we got distracted by a call on his phone and never went back to the conversation again.