90,000 cases of mental illness last year

Bolgatanga, May 3, GNA - The country's three major psychiatric hospitals at Akanfo in the Central Region, and Pantang and Asylum Down in the Grater Accra Region recorded 90,000 cases of mental illness last year.

The National Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Akwasi Osei, announced this in Bolgatanga on Wednesday at the regional launching of "Building Alliance for Mental Health and Development."

The event was organised by Basic Needs, an NGO operating in the area of mental illness in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

Dr Osei stated that, if the situation was not checked it could affect productivity tremendously in future, since most of the youth, who were the productive age group, were becoming mentally deranged. He further explained that the country's three major psychiatric hospitals were understaffed and could not meet the challenges facing their operations.

He noted that there w ere about 500 psychiatric nurses in the country, which he stated, were very few and should have been at least 2000 to meet the demands of patients. Dr Osei stressed the need for a multi-sectoral and collaborative approach to be able to tackle the mental problem and noted that it was against this background that the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Ghana Health Service (GHS) had made it a cardinal principle to foster collaboration with the private sector.

"Private-Public Sector is the conventional system now," he emphasised and commended Basic Needs for collaborating with the GHS in addressing mental illness needs, since its inception in 2000. He urged NGOs and other stakeholders to emulate Basic Needs, and to forge a partnership with the GHS in order to effectively and efficiently address the health needs of the mentally retarded.

Dr Osei suggested that NGOs and other stakeholders could collaborate with the GHS, by providing public education in the area of mental illness, the effects of drug abuse and to help build "care centres" for the mentally ill.

In his welcome address, the Programme Manager of Basic Needs, Mr Peter Yaro Badimak, reiterated that the rate at which people, especially the youth, were becoming mentally deranged could affect the country's workforce, if pragmatic measures were not taken to curtail the menace. Mr Badimak stated that it was against this background that Basic Needs, in building the capacity of the mental ill, promotes community based mental health services, and supports sustainable livelihood through practical activities to realise the potentials of mentally ill people.

He announced that his outfit was currently working with 9,542 mentally ill people in the Northern, Upper East, and Upper West regions, of which 90 per cent were receiving regular treatment from psychiatric units.

He added that a significant number of them had had their condition stabilized and were carrying on with normal work. 3 May 06