Fund for mentally challenged patients neglected for 7 years – Dr. Akwasi Osei

The Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Authority, Dr. Akwasi Osei, has revealed that a support fund set up by the authority for the society to contribute to the wellbeing of mentally challenged people in the country has been neglected.

In an interview with GhanaWeb, Dr. Osei expressed his disappointment in the neglect of mentally challenged people in society. According to him, a fund created for beauty pageantry gets even more attention than one created for mentally challenged patients.

“There’s a mental health fund, it’s been established seven years ago, and still there’s nothing in it. Nobody is interested in it. If it’s a fund for beauty pageants, we would be sure that by now, people have contributed a lot to it. There’s a fund, but people don’t care,” he stated.

He recounted a bitter experience when a radio station was only able to receive GHC300 till date since it began shining light and informing listeners about supporting the fund about four years ago.

“There was a time a radio station decided to embark on a campaign to get money about four/five years ago. Till date, they only had about GHC300. A whole society that leaves its mental health patients to be walking about on the streets, tell us this society is not doing well enough,” he lamented.

He concluded that in the wake of the coronavirus, Ghanaians should contact the authority to support the mentally ill patients in any way they can, as their exposure to the virus will put everyone else at risk since they do not put much consideration into observing safety protocols.

“The coronavirus, we know that it’s airborne … If a mental health person passes by, it can get into his nostril. So they can get exposed to that as they are exposed to all kinds of danger and at the end of the day, it exposes us to them too,” he concluded.