Mental Health Authority builds capacity of journalists

The Chief Executive of the Mental Health Authority (MHA), Dr Akwasi Osei, has challenged Ghanaians to hold the authority responsible for protecting the rights of persons suffering from mental disorders in traditional and other faith-based camps.

He said by the end of the year, the MHA would have sensitised traditional and faith-based groups, where those with mental disorders were referred to, to their new roles as frontline groups as specified in the Mental Health Act 2012 (Act 846).

“By the end of the year, abuse in faith-based camps or traditional healing camps will not be happening,” he told journalists at a training organised by the MHA in Accra last Tuesday.

Sensitisation

The day’s training for about 45 journalists was part of the MHA’s sensitisation on the Mental Health Act 2012.

Some judges, police officers and teachers have already been trained in the national capital and also in some regions.

For the media, it was to provide the opportunity to assess their reportage on mental health conditions and get acquainted with the new dispensation of mental health that the Act 846 instituted.

Abuse criminalised

Dr Osei told journalists that the Mental Health Act 2012 abolished chaining, logging and shackling of sufferers of any mental disorder, but recognised traditional and faith-based camps, making them frontline support for sufferers.

Thus, the authority was scaling up training of those in charge of those camps on their role.

He said for the media,  attention had to be paid to their reportage because the Act criminalised language that sought to denigrate or abuse anyone with a mental health condition.

Dr Osei indicated that some media institutions denigrated sufferers by calling them mad, imbeciles and idiots.

He, therefore, cautioned journalists to be careful as they could be prosecuted for crime if they did not change their style of reporting under the new mental health dispensation of Act 846.

Suicide/depression

A consultant psychiatrist and Head of the Psychiatric Department of the University of Ghana, Dr Sammy Ohene, said most mental health disorders could be treated.

Mr Emmanuel Nii Boye Quarshie of the Psychology Department of the University of Ghana, took journalists through suicidal tendencies and its reportage, while a Specialist Psychiatrist at the Pantang Hospital, Dr Kojo Obeng, discussed stress management and depression.

Writer's email: caroline.boateng@graphic.com.gh