Mental Health System on the verge of collapse - Dr Osei

Accra, May 10, GNA, Dr Akwasi Osei, Chief Psychiatrist of the Ghana Health Service, on Monday said the mental health system would soon collapse if the Mental Health Bill was not passed to correct the abuses and injustices in mental care.

He said it was unfortunate that the Bill, drafted in 2004 and completed 2006, was still lingering at the Ministry of Health. Speaking at a workshop on the State of the Mental Health Bill and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, (UNCRP) for media practitioners, in Accra, he stressed that there was the need for the law to protect the rights and interest of patients and to overhaul the entire mental health system. "The passage of the Bill is very necessary for mental health patients who do not have ownership of their senses to enable the system to defend their vulnerability, weaknesses and defencelessness." According to Dr Osei, the passage of the bill should be of great concern to every Ghanaian because there was a 25 percent chance of each individual getting a mental problem and added that out of the about 2.4 million Ghanaians living with mental disorders only two percent had access to care.

Ghana, he said, had only 14 practising psychiatrists who were also based in only three regions of the country giving the ration of one psychiatrist to 1.7 million people as compared to 1:506 in Kenya and one to million people in Nigeria.

In Kenya, Uganda and in Nigeria, where budgetary allocation to mental health was less than Ghana's 1.6 percent, mental care is decentralised and better managed than Ghana's which is focused on centralised institutional care.

According to Dr Osei, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) requires that mental health care should start from self care through informal community care, primary health care, community health service, regional and finally to long stay facilities. He, however, noted that the reversed situation prevailed in Ghana. "This situation if not corrected would spell doom for the country," he cautioned.

The pending Bill, which he said had been hailed by the WHO as one of the best legislation worldwide, seeks to ensure that adequate provision of resources has nine parts consisting of a mental health board, a Service, a Review Tribunal (to review mental cases), Visiting Committee, Voluntary Treatment and involuntary treatment. The other parts of the Bill are the Rights of a Person (to take a look human Right abuses and discrimination associated with mental health), Protection of the Vulnerable Group and miscellaneous provisions. The Bill would also de emphasise institutional care and help place mental care on the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). He charged the media to put the government and Ministry of Health on their toes to ensure the passage of the Bill, adding that the poor state of mental rights, protection of mental patients were justification for its passage.

Mr Francis Adjetey Sowah, Vice Chairman of the Disabled Sport Association of Ghana, who spoke on the UNCRP, said every living person had some kind of impairment but those whose disabilities were conspicuous bore the brunt of the discrimination associated with it. In Ghana, he said, about 2.2 million of the country's population were persons with disabilities and mostly lived on the fringes and peripheries of society, adding that because they were the poorest and in the minority their voices were not heard. Twenty percent of the world's poorest were persons with disability and in Africa majority of them do not have education. He said they were seriously discriminated against even with the passage of the Disability Bill in Ghana and called on the government to conform to treaties and conventions they had signed to make life meaningful to intended beneficiaries.