Foundation supports mental patients
Mental health may have become a virtual taboo subject in some parts of Ghana, but in the Upper West Region a non-governmental organisation has confronted the issue on a different front.
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The Bahass Foundation has assumed responsibility for the bathing, feeding and clothing of mental patients every two weeks.
An Executive Director of Bahass Foundation, Iliasu Yussif Baba, said matters of mental health required a genuine heart to be committed to helping such patients.
“The worst part is the stigma that drives even family members away from mental patients,” he said.
Yet, in the modest way of the Foundation, it has registered 92 mental patients in the Upper West Region onto the National Health Insurance Scheme, with 62 of them coming from Wa alone.
“We are able to access health services for all the mental patients on our register with their NHIS cards to treat simple ailments,” he told the Daily Graphic. “It is a commitment we intend to keep as our contribution to humanity.”
Biggest regret
His biggest regret, he said, was the absence of a facility for mental patients in the region.
Only recently, a team was inaugurated to oversee mental health and attendant matters in the country.
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Even before that team begins proper work, Mr Yussif Baba said, providing a ‘home’ for mental patients in the Upper West Region should be a prime consideration for the members.
Indeed, despite the efforts of the Bahass Foundation, all the mental patients return to the streets after they have been bathed and clothed, their lives still threatened due to the circumstances that surround them.
For example, one young woman has been impregnated by an unknown man, while the baby of another mental patient has been taken to the St Joseph’s Orphanage at Jirapa.
“Some of these problems could have been prevented if we had a facility to accommodate them,” the Executive Director of the Foundation”, Mr Yussif Baba said.
Keeping them safe and indoors
“We have made efforts to acquire some kind of accommodation to keep them safe and indoors, but not even the volumes of letters to persons in authority have yielded any positive results so far.”
On a day when the world celebrated the International Day for the Youth on the subject of Youth and Mental Health, he said it was appropriate that a thought was spared for the persons who were unfortunate to have been struck by mental ailment.