Journalists attend forum on mental health
Mental health experts have identified myths, prejudices and misconceptions associated with mental illness as major challenges to efforts at improving mental healthcare in Ghana.
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The Chairman of the Mental Health Authority Board, Professor Joseph B. Asare, said mental health experts were counting on the media to use their platform to demystify and accurately inform the public on mental health.
He said mental illness was like any other ailment and could be fully cured in many cases.
He mentioned depression, phobia, sleeplessness due to worry and madness as some mental ailments.
About 10.3 million Ghanaians are said to have one form of mental challenge or another.
Mental health training
Speaking at a capacity-building forum on mental health for journalists in Accra, Prof Asare said the media was a major stakeholder in any advocacy campaign.
It was organised by Basic Needs Ghana (BNG), a mental health and development advocacy non-governmental organisation aimed at ensuring that the mentally ill and epileptic lived successfully in their communities, working and exercising their basic rights.
The workshop was funded by Star-Ghana, in collaboration with UK Aid and USAID.
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Stigma
Prof Asare said misconceptions about mental illness had resulted in a situation where society had been stigmatising the mentally ill and their families.
He said the notion that the mentally ill could not be completely cured, that cured mentally ill persons remained a threat to family and society, the idea of seeing mental illness as spiritual illness or a curse, among others, were some of the misconceptions associated with mental health.
According to him, the fear of being stigmatised by society had prevented the mentally ill or their families from resorting to clinical treatment as the initial recourse.
In some cases, the families avoided identifying with their mentally ill relations and sometimes abandoned them at places very far from home, he noted.
In his address, the Executive Director of BNG, Mr Badimark Peter Yaro, said the group was organising a series of information dissemination exercises for most stakeholders to facilitate their understanding in the implementation of the Mental Health Act and how to contribute to quality mental health delivery.
He said mental health had moved from being only a health issue to a social problem and, therefore, required the attention of all stakeholders.
In his remarks, a clinical psychologist at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Mr Alfred Nii Nortey Dua, appealed to journalists to not equate mental health simply with madness or mental illness.
He said madness was just a minute aspect of mental health and asked journalists to make mental health report a priority because it was a development issue.
Writer’s email doreen.andoh@graphic.com.gh