Mentally ill patients need support

Mentally ill patients need support
Article: Salome Donkor
THE country’s mental health has suffered developmental hardship from the colonial era to the present day. Since the celebration of the centenary anniversary of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital last year, a lot has been said on the need for a total support from well-meaning Ghanaians both individuals and corporate bodies, to deal with the challenges facing mental health patients.
Health experts define mental illness as anything that affects a person’s thoughts, emotions or behaviour that results in a negative effect on the person or those around them and also an obvious change in their personality, among other symptoms.
Mental health problems range from chronic mental disorders, trauma, and distress to a great deal of suffering and the World Health Organisation (WHO) has stated that 50 per cent of the estimated 200 million migrants recorded by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) suffered mental health problems.
Looking at this definition of mental illness it is obvious that mental health is a major issue which can affect anybody and one does not need to go naked or wear dirty and tattered clothing or maintain an upkept bushy hair, to demonstrate signs of mental problems.
The situation is more disturbing if one considers facts presented by the immediate past Chief Psychiatrist of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr J.B. Asare, who was reported to have stated that about 25 per cent of Ghanaians suffer mental health problems.
Motorists who use the Mental Hospital-Cathedral Road, might have come into contact with a very noble looking woman, who approaches motorists for money. I always have goose pimples on my body when I see this noble woman, and wonder what is wrong with her.
The need for relatives of treated mental patients to take care of the cured patients and help integrate them into the society, is very important.
According to records at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, the nation was spending GH¢87,600 (¢876 million) annually or GH¢240 (¢2.4 million) daily on the feeding of mental patients whose relatives had refused to take them home after treatment at the psychiatric hospitals.
The records further indicate that a huge chunk of the daily feeding fee drawn from the national kitty, goes waste because one-third of mental patients who are treated refuse to go home, thus compelling hospital authorities to feed them ;as well as those on admission.
Records further indicate that although the Accra Psychiatric Hospital is designed to accommodate at least 800 patients, there are about 1,200 patients there as of now, many of whom have been treated and are supposed to go home, leading to congestion at the wards and over-stretching the hospital’s facilities.
Some mental patients are also seen roaming the city thereby posing as threats to pedestrians. It is in this vain that the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has appealed to the Ministry of Manpower, Youth and Employment and the Department of Social Welfare to help rid Accra of lunatics before the commencement of the 2008 African Cup of Nations.
The Special Assistant to the AMA Chief Executive, and the acting head of Public Affairs of the AMA, Mr Ali Baba Bature was reported to have said that during one of its decongestion exercises in 2005, the AMA was able to rehabilitate about 240 lunatics at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, but due to financial constraints it could not continue with the programme.
     He said if the lunatics on the streets would be given the necessary attention, he believed some of them could recover and play useful roles in the society.
The WHO estimates that globally, 450 million people alive today suffer from mental or neurological disorders or from psycho-social problems such as those related to alcohol and drug abuse. Mental illness, therefore remained a major public health problem in every country, a situation, which the organisation says had been escalated by the number of factors, including wars, that had given rise to several thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons often living under trying conditions.
“Many of them suffer silently, many of them suffer alone. Beyond the suffering and beyond the absence of care lies the frontiers of stigma, shame, exclusion and more than we care to know, death,” Dr Joachim Saweka, the WHO Representative in Ghana, was reported to have said in an address read on his behalf during the celebration of the World Mental Health Day in Accra recently.
Dr Saweka pointed out that major depression was now the leading cause of disability globally and ranked fourth among the 10 leading causes of global burden of diseases and called for a change in cultural practices which negatively affected mentally -ill people.
A Community Mental Health Officer of Basic Needs Basic Rights, Mr Dokurugu Adam Yahaya reportedly stressed the need for the public to avoid stigmatisation of epileptics and mental patients and help integrate them into the society.
He made the statement at a mental health week in Tamale and further indicated the need for increase in public awareness to make it possible for many people to seek treatment for their mental illness.
We all need to do something to help integrate cured mental patients into the society. The issue of stigmatisation had compounded the problem. This is because mental illness is believed by some people to emanate from evil spirits, gods, enemies, punishment from ancestors, curses invoked upon people for their evil .
The warning by the Medical Director of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital and acting Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Akwasi Osei, that people should change that perception and champion the rights of mental health patients because everyone could suffer mental illness at anytime, must be taken seriously.
Let’s not forget that mental illness is no respector of persons.
There is the need for intensive public education on mental health issues through adequate provision of resources for information and educational committee activities by the community, psychiatric nurses and public health educators.