With the closure of all public places, the stay-at-home order and the worsening economic indices occasioned by the fall in the price of crude oil with no foreseeable end, learned helplessness, negative emotions, and other psychosocial problems are bound to thrive. Interventions to improve social capital, coping resources, resilience, and good community and family cohesion are needed to promote psychosocial well-being during and after the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria.

Noma is a neglected tropical disease of an underserved population. Our review describes the volume and scope of existing research evidence on psychosocial aspects of Noma in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Our literature search was conducted on all original peer-reviewed research articles on the psychosocial aspects of Noma in each country in SSA using PubMed, Google Scholar, and a direct search of reference list of pertinent journal articles. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines was used to describe the review. A total of six studies were found in four countries of the region. One in three persons with Noma has a mental health condition, indices of social disadvantage and belief in the supernatural causation of the disease are very common. However, despite evidence of enormous need, a huge gap still exists in the area of psychosocial alleviation.

Background: Despite robust evidence of the huge burden of caregiving amongst caregivers of patients with schizophrenia, there is a paucity of data in Africa on the interventions to address this enormous burden of caregiving.Aim: This study aimed to determine the effect of structured psychoeducation intervention on the burden of caregiving in comparison with ‘care as usual’ in a Nigerian Psychiatric Hospital.Setting: This study was done at the out-patient and in-patient units of the Federal Neuropsychiatric Hospital, Enugu, Nigeria.Methods: Caregivers of inpatients who fulfilled the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) criteria for diagnosis of schizophrenia were recruited for the study. The caregivers were then allocated into two groups (Group A received structured psychoeducation intervention in addition to ‘care as usual’ whilst group B received only ‘care as usual’). After the baseline assessment, the caregivers were followed up every 4 weeks for a period of 12 weeks. At each interval of follow-up, caregivers were assessed for caregivers’ burden using the Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI). Repeated measures analysis of variance (mixed type) was used to determine the effects of the interventions on caregivers’ burden in the two arms of the study across the intervals of follow-up.Results: The attrition rate at week 12 was 10.7%; leaving 130 for the assessment of outcome variable at the end of follow-up. Structured psychoeducation intervention was significantly better than ‘care as usual’ in ameliorating caregivers’ burden [F (1, 123) = 21.75, p 0.001, Partial Eta Squared = 0.39].Conclusion: These findings seem to suggest that caregivers who received structured psychoeducation intervention experienced a greater reduction in caregiver burden than those who received ‘care as usual’. Whilst the study addressed short-term effect, the findings of this study are in accord with other studies that have supported the impression that psychoeducational family-based intervention is useful with regard to caregiver burden.