Ex-chief psychiatrist on mental health sector

Accra, April 27, GNA - Research by the World Health Organisation has shown that developing countries would be hit by depression in 2015 due to poverty and other factors.

This is a wake-up call for the Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health to mobilise funds to address the problem of lack of personnel in mental health sector, Dr Joseph Bediako Asare, immediate past Chief Psychiatrist of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, said on Friday.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra he noted that it was only when the problem of personnel was addressed that proper counselling by specialists could be sought when the need arose. Dr Asare said doctors and nurses trained in mental health were not motivated adding that, this had discouraged a lot of people from entering the profession.

He noted that the state had invested so much in students at the medical school only for them to leave for other countries to seek greener pastures.

Dr Asare advised Ghanaians to dismiss the perception that mental ailment was spiritual saying, "Such beliefs do not help the patients, family members and the country as whole because we waste money soliciting the assistance of people who rather delay treatment and worsen situations."

He noted that mental health had become a national problem which called for awareness especially among the youth who fell prey to it. Dr Asare said factors like bio-chemicals in the brain, genetic inheritance, brain tumour, fever, malaria and lack of vitamins B12 and B1 as well as other social or life events like poverty, marital and emotional problems could cause mental health disorders.

"What the psychiatric hospital seeks to do is to educate and create awareness on the disease and put up centres in all polyclinics to address mental issues. By so doing the stigma associated with the diseases would be eradicated and be seen as any normal sickness." Dr Asare, who is also the patron of Psych-Mental Health, an NGO, suggested that community mental care should be established with community psychiatric nurses to take patients in the communities. "This is to de-emphasize institutional care as against immediate access to treatment for patients."