On a quiet night in her Abuja resort, Pleasure Adeboye, 23, sits on her mattress clutching her telephone, her thoughts racing and chest tightening. On her display is yet one more abusive message from her stalker – a person she had met 9 months earlier at her church.
He had requested Adeboye out; when she declined, he started sending her intimidating, insulting and blackmailing messages on social media, in addition to spreading false information about her on-line. There have been even demise threats.
The expertise is taking its toll on her psychological well being, leaving her struggling to cope. Household and buddies she confided in did not take it severely, and she or he can’t afford in-person remedy or counselling. As the feeling of panic rose at the sight of his phrases, she turns to another: a WhatsApp chatbot known as Chat Kemi.
“Good night, Resilient Pleasure,” the bot varieties. “How are you in the present day?”
Adeboye hesitates, then begins typing: “Somebody is defaming me on-line and threatening to kill me, as a result of I refused to date him. I’m depressed and confused. What ought to I do?”
The chatbot, which Adeboye had heard about at an occasion on gender-based violence run by an NGO, advises her to deactivate her social media accounts and supply all crucial information about the particular person making the threats to somebody she trusts.
For the first time in months, Adeboye says, she felt much less alone.
AI platforms providing first-line psychological well being assist have proliferated over the previous yr, with early trials in the US exhibiting mixed results. In Nigeria, the place AI has been embraced in lots of sectors and industries, a rising variety of individuals flip to chatbots for digital remedy.
Nigeria’s well being system, together with its psychological well being provision, has lengthy been underfunded. Between 2015 and 2025, Nigeria has constantly spent lower than 5% of its budget to healthcare, with 4.2% allotted for 2026, far lower than the 15% goal that African Union member states agreed to as a part of the 2001 Abuja Declaration. It is not identified how many individuals in Nigeria stay with psychological well being circumstances however, with only 262 psychiatrists in a rustic of 240 million individuals, most do not get ample remedy.
The shortages have been exacerbated by the Trump administration dismantling USAID, which has badly hit services in Nigeria, particularly at the major stage, having a devastating effect on patients in communities already fighting HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and different well being challenges. Greater than 90% of Nigerians have no health insurance, and now face uncertainty over entry to providers and emotions of helplessness over rising prices.
Personal healthcare is costly; one remedy session can value between 50,000 naira (£27) – the equal of per week’s price of groceries. Cultural stigma stays robust; many Nigerians nonetheless affiliate psychological sickness with religious weak point or witchcraft.
Industrial and nonprofit AI initiatives are beginning to fill this vacuum. HerSafeSpace is an organisation that gives free and immediate authorized and emotional help to victims of technology-facilitated gender-based violence in 5 west and central African international locations. Its Chat Kemi service is out there in native and worldwide languages.
“These providers don’t exchange remedy,” says its founder, Abideen Olasupo. As a substitute, the chatbot makes use of a referral system to direct customers and particular instances to psychological well being, authorized or psychosocial professionals or organisations, ought to the want come up.
“Our main goal is to assist younger ladies, who are significantly weak to gender-based violence, particularly on-line,” he says.
Different platforms in Nigeria providing comparable providers embody FriendnPal, whose AI chatbot gives emotional assist, matches sufferers with licensed therapists and contains temper monitoring, psycho-education and ASMR tools to alleviate stress and anxiousness.
Its pay-as-you-go mannequin provides customers immediate entry to tailor-made remedy periods that may embody homework or assessments, in accordance to Esther Eruchie, who created the service in response to the lack of her mom after years of melancholy attributable to her 20-year-old brother’s demise.
One other platform, Blueroomcare, connects purchasers with licensed therapists by video, voice, textual content and in-app messaging. It affords in-person outpatient and digital care at companion clinics nationwide, features a free wellness evaluation, and fees between 5,000 and 51,000 naira for a therapist subscription plan.
“Remedy was typically too costly, and there weren’t sufficient professionals to meet the demand,” says Moses Aiyenuro, who based Blueroomcare after his personal struggles with melancholy. “I needed to construct a platform that lowers the limitations to care.”
The know-how utilized by these apps follows scripts written by licensed Nigerian psychologists and therapists who ship care to customers.
In Lagos, Oluwakemi Oluwakayode, a mom of 4, began utilizing FriendnPal’s chatbot after watching her eight-year-old daughter endure frequent seizures due to cerebral palsy.
“Typically, it gave very commonplace replies,” she admits. “However I might lastly say issues I couldn’t share with my household. That alone gave me reduction.”
Later, the app related her with a licensed therapist – one thing she says she would by no means have thought-about with out AI easing her into it.
Dr Pleasure Aifuobhokhan, a Lagos-based public well being physician, says these platforms’ benefit is that they are extra inexpensive and environment friendly than typical remedy. “Digital platforms save time in any other case spent getting ready, commuting and ready [to be seen] at bodily session centres,” she says.
However some specialists warning that AI can’t present the similar stage of experience as a certified therapist. “These platforms borrow from scientific strategies like CBT [cognitive behavioural therapy] and mindfulness,” says Dr Nihinlola Olowe, a psychologist at Dwell Nonetheless Counselling Providers, a Nigerian-based psychological well being apply.
“They are often helpful for coping, however they can not exchange the depth or judgment {of professional} care.”
Eruchie says FriendnPal has run greater than 10,000 periods in the previous yr, whereas Olasupo says HerSafeSpace has 1,600 customers throughout three continents. Blueroomcare declined to say what number of customers it had.
However measuring the affect primarily based on numbers alone is a problem. “The actual story lies in the engagement,” says Olasupo. “It’s thrilling to see that customers aren’t simply utilizing the app and leaving – they’re coming again many times.”
For a lot of sufferers, the immediacy and anonymity of a chatbot is key to its attraction however the ease of digital care might come at the value of privateness. Avril Eyewu-Edero, a cybersecurity professional, believes that with out introducing robust database protections in Nigeria, delicate information – corresponding to medical histories – turns into weak the second it enters an AI system.
“If startups fail to prioritise privateness and encryption from the outset, adoption will stall. Nigerians are keen however cautious,” she says.
Founders of the providers acknowledge these uncertainties, typically highlighting their use of end-to-end encryption, distinctive codes that determine customers or units with out together with personally identifiable information, and strict non-sharing insurance policies – even with authorities authorities, until compelled by a courtroom order.
Now, medical professionals are calling on the Nigerian authorities to develop enforceable nationwide requirements for AI. Dr Alero Roberts, a public well being marketing consultant and lecturer at the College of Lagos’s medical school, says: “AI chatbots for psychological well being are an modern resolution, however with out strong regulation, we are venturing blindly into doubtlessly harmful territory.
“Robots can’t interpret human emotion as people do. For individuals in disaster, like suicidal ideas or psychosis, human contact is essential. Somebody, even a non-professional, can recognise the want for pressing intervention,” she says. “This is typically misplaced with AI; robust governance is important.”
In contrast to medicines or hospitals, AI psychological well being platforms function in a regulatory gray zone. Nigeria’s 2023 Data Protection Act units baseline privateness requirements however lacks particular AI laws for healthcare.
“The primary subject is enforcement, not a scarcity of legal guidelines,” says Ayotunde Abiodun of SBM Intelligence, a thinktank that gives evaluation on political, financial and social points in Nigeria and throughout west Africa.
Babatunde Bamigboye, head of laws at the Nigeria Data Protection Commission, a statutory physique arrange underneath the 2023 legislation, says: “Any use involving private information should adjust to the act. The framework focuses on information ethics, testing inside sandboxes, and threat mitigation. AI in Nigeria is ruled, however not through AI-specific legal guidelines.”
In Lagos, Oluwakayode continues to use FriendnPal. At some point, she hopes to afford in-person remedy, however for now, the bot is her companion.
“I do know it’s not an actual human,” she says. “However at 2am, it appears like somebody is there for me. And that’s sufficient to preserve me going.”
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