By Abah Anthony John, Abuja
The founder of the Psycho-Spiritual Institute (PSI), a Catholic entity that specializes in psycho-trauma healing, is calling for urgent professional support for the people of God in Nigeria, where he says virtually everyone suffers from trauma amid a myriad of challenges that cause emotional wounds and psychological distress.
In an interview with ACI Africa on the sidelines of a week-long psycho-spiritual trauma healing training for members of the Senate of Veritas University Abuja, Fr. George Ehusani said, “Nigeria is traumatized. Almost everyone is traumatized – from poverty to terrorist attacks, to banditry, insecurity, deaths, bereavement, losses, and all kinds of tragedies. And many people have no means or resources to process their trauma.”
In the July 25 interview, Fr. Ehusani said that “this national crisis calls for urgent action not only from mental health professionals but also from spiritual and educational leaders, who are often first responders to people in distress.”
“Our motto is ‘healed people heal people.’ Having been healed, we send them back to their universities, their Dioceses, their Congregations, and their Parishes, and we believe they will help to heal others,” the Executive Director of the Lux Terra Leadership Foundation said.
The PSI whose founding in 2013 Fr. Ehusani spearheaded in partnership with Missio Aachen “with the aim of training and graduating experts in Psycho-Spiritual Therapy and Counselling for African countries” has campuses in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, and lately in Abuja, the capital city of Nigeria.
The campus in Abuja affiliated to Veritas University Abuja is an expansion of the Nairobi campus that has been affiliated to the Kenya-based Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA) since 2014. So far, the Institute has trained 170 professionals from 27 countries and is set to graduate about 190 by end of 2026.
“We’ve also trained 500 people in one-week workshops like this—laypeople, doctors, social workers, teachers, and even policemen,” Fr. Ehusani told ACI Africa.
These trainings, he said, offer more than just theoretical knowledge. They combine elements of psychotherapy with spirituality to provide holistic healing.
“We are unique here because we use an integration of psychotherapy and spirituality. Our experience is that we get better results that way,” the Nigerian Catholic Priest said.
The July 21-26 workshop for Veritas University Senate members sought to highlight the critical need for psychological first aid training among administrators, teachers, and staff, targeting those who regularly support students facing academic stress, personal loss, and social challenges.
