How do you deal with stress? In Nigeria, swinging a sledgehammer in a ‘rage room’ helps

How do you deal with stress? In Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, people are finding their reset button in a “rage room” where they pay to smash electronics and furniture with a sledgehammer as a respite from the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation.

The Shadow Rage Room, apparently the first of its kind in Nigeria, provides “a safe space” for people to express pent-up emotions, according to Dr. James Babajide Banjoko, its founder and a medical doctor. The idea, he said, came during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 after he lost his mother and struggled with his work.

For 7,500 naira ($5), customers wearing protective gear and a sledgehammer or club are left alone in a room for 30 minutes to recycle their items.

These are tough times in Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people, where growing youth frustration has led to recent mass protests in which several people have been killed by security forces. Inflation has surged to a 28-year high of 33.4 percent, while the naira has fallen to record lows against the dollar.

For many people in Africa’s most populous country, mental health services remain unknown or unaffordable, with 40% of the population living on less than $2 a day.

According to the Nigerian Association of Clinical Psychologists, the West African country has fewer than 400 registered psychologists, meaning one psychologist for about half a million people.

Even where therapy is available, stigma remains a challenge, NACP President Gboyega Emmanuel Abikoye said in an interview.

Rage rooms aren’t necessarily new in other parts of the world. There’s no documented evidence of their mental health benefits, other than the temporary relief you get from expressing your feelings, Abikoye said.

Experts in Nigeria, on the other hand, see a growing need for long-term emotional support, especially among young people.

In Lagos, a crowded city of about 20 million people and a magnet for those seeking better opportunities, such needs are even more apparent. Daily stressors include traffic jams that have been known to leave drivers and passengers stuck on the streets for hours in heat and smog in one of the world’s most polluted cities.

Some Nigerians have turned to social media platforms like Tiktok to cope with stress. Some find support in communities wherever they can, from the church or mosque to the gym.

And now there’s the Rage Room, which opens on weekends and, according to Banjoko, the founder, is usually booked up to two weeks in advance.

At the end of a smashing session, Olaribigbe Akeem, a recent visitor, emerged sweaty but also relieved and visibly happy.

“As an average Nigerian, you deal with a lot every day,” Akeem said. “The anger is building up (and) instead of taking it out on someone, this is the best way for me, and I feel a lot more rejuvenated.”

Couples who want to get something off their chest also occasionally come to the Rage Room.

Sometimes people come here for relaxation, but they find more than that.

“My favorite people are the ones who … just want to try, and at the end of the day you see them, they break down, they cry, they become very expressive,” Banjoko said. He said he often refers them to therapy.

According to Dr Maymunah Yusuf Kadiri, a Lagos-based psychiatrist, the effect of breaking things is usually short-lived and is not a substitute for therapy.

There is also a risk that such a practice could make someone less likely to use “healthy coping strategies,” she said, raising concerns that “repeated engagement … could reinforce aggressive tendencies.”

Some clients who were in the anger room reported that their problems only became less severe when they left the room and returned to their daily lives.

But being vulnerable to yourself while you’re stuck inside, sledgehammer in hand, is still worth it, says Eka Stephanie Paul, an actress and TV host.

“Problem is not solved anyway,” she said in the pidgin widely spoken in Nigeria, acknowledging that the rage room is hardly a cure. “But right now I feel very light.”

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