Helena Selby
8 August 2008
The Acting Chief Psychiatrist of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Akwasi Osei, has noted that though it is government policy to offer free treatment to patients, the idea was being defeated by inadequate funding.
This, according to him, had brought about a lot of hardship to both patients and staff of the hospital.
Speaking at a programme organised by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) in Accra, on the theme "Human rights violation in prayer camps, and access to mental health," he noted that mental health personnel were currently in short supply.
He emphasized that there were only 14 consultant psychiatrists, instead of 70, who are all located in the southern part of the country, with eleven of them already retired.
"There are only about 600 psychiatric nurses, while the country needs at least 2,000 clinical psychiatric nurses, and 20 clinical psychologists, with only two at the Ministry of Health, yet the country needs 20 clinical psychiatrists in the ministry alone," he added.
He indicated that about 440,000 Ghanaians suffer from severe forms of mental illness, with 2,000 of these already on admission at the three hospitals, namely the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Pantang and Ankaful in the Central Region.
On her part, the Regional Coordinator of CHRI, Mrs. Nana Oye Lithur, noted that in a research conducted by the organisation in the various regions, as to what goes on in prayer camps, it was discovered that human rights violations were rife in the camps, with very little differences in the types of abuses across the camps.
She mentioned that generally, the inmates were treated as if they were less than human, and undeserving of respect and dignity.
She pointed out that prominent among the treatments received by the patients, includes chaining, denial of food, verbal and physical abuse, isolation and forced medication. According to her, their research revealed that with most of the camp leaders, the incidence of chaining up the mentally disabled constituted a feature of the healing process.
According to Lithur, the research further indicated that apart from socio-cultural influences, lack of education and access to conventional psychiatric treatment, was being considered as part of the reasons behind their attitude of taking a mentally-retarded person to a prayer camp, and financial problems was also a vital problem.
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