ABSTRACT
Mental health narratives, no doubt, occupy a marginal position in Nigerian literary scholarship. While countries in Europe and North America may have developed some humanizing skills in handling mentally challenged people, Nigeria has not really improved on the treatments of psychiatric patients. Contemporary African literary and cultural studies have shown impressive interests in minority discourse. Minority narratives, the world over, have helped to unfold regional oppression and resentments as well as cultural peculiarities. The response to the sociocultural surroundings is a major obligation of the writer, especially, in the African context, where social consciousness and commitments are the drivers of literary productions. The depiction of mental diseases in literary texts is within the ambit of literature and psychiatry, which is a subspecialty of literature and medicine. A major mental condition foregrounded in the story “Blacked out Nights of Love” is depression, which is exhibited by both characters.
