Workshop on community mental health opens

BasicNeeds-Ghana, a Non-Governmental Organisation, has organised a stakeholder’s meeting on ways of improving community mental health for sustainable development.

The meeting is to solicit stakeholder’s views on the way forward in addressing issues of community mental health as well as implement the Mental Health Law.

Mr Peter Yaro, Executive Director of BasicNeeds, said since the passage of the law on mental health, the Legislative Instrument, the regional and district mental health committees and the mental health fund were yet to be approved and called for their speedy approval.

He said the Mental Health Law was a functional law whose impact could only be felt if it was fully implemented and this required a multi-stakeholder approach.

Mr Yaro said over the years, the NGO had developed a database of participants who had been through their programmes and had reached out to 42,169 direct beneficiaries in 349 communities.

He said the organisation had collected data on mental health from all operational sites in various countries to monitor and assess its impact and had over 624,900 people who had been through their programmes globally.

Mr Yaro said the organisation, in 2003, had mobilised and trained 113 partners from ministries of health to community based organisations who contributed to the overall delivery of the global programme.

He said currently the organisation had programmes, partners and a franchisee in 12 countries in Africa including Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, South Sudan and Asia.

He said there was nationwide shortage of psychotropic and anti-epilepsy medicines, inadequate resource allocation for the mental health sector by government for service delivery, and mental health tribunals yet to be operational.

Dr Cynthia Sottie, Focal Person, Mental Health at Ghana Health Service, said the service had developed guidelines for the establishment of mental health units on the regional and district levels.

She said the country had three regional hospitals with mental health units: Koforidua, Volta and Brong Ahafo regions and that government had pledged to extend the unit to all the regions to improve mental health delivery.

Dr Sottie added that the health service had recruited 12 clinical psychiatrists and had posted them to the various mental health communities.