‘Adopt new approach to treatment of mental illness’

The Minister of Health, Mr Alex Segbefia, has called for a new approach to the diagnosis of mental illness and the treatment of mental patients in the country.

Specifically, he called for a shift from the reliance on custodial isolation of mental patients to open warmth of community concern with emphasis on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation outside psychiatric hospitals.

Mr Segbefia made the call at the opening of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons (GCPS) annual general and scientific meeting in Accra Wednesday.

The occasion also marked the induction of 99 new members and 26 new fellows into the college. The members were residents who had completed their course of training in their various faculties and were successful at the membership examinations of the college.

Mental health realities

Mr Segbefia asked the health system at all levels to face up to the reality that mental health was becoming a huge challenge in every community.

For instance, he said recent studies showed that the rate of psychological distress was 41 per cent.

“We are advised by mental experts that the spate of suicides we are seeing and hearing of in the media as an almost daily affair is all a manifestation of mental health problems and distress among some vulnerable people in the society,” he added.

Mr Segbefia said the country needed a system that would clearly focus on early intervention, particularly for children and young adults, rather than one that focused on crisis management and damage control.

He said the number of professionals and sub-professionals in the health system would have to be increased to cater for the situation, suggesting further that emphasis should be placed on “timely and intensive diagnosis, treatment, training and rehabilitation.

He said that was necessary so that the mentally afflicted could be cured or their functions restored to the extent of making it possible for them to be effectively integrated into society.

Palmer Buckle

The Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Archbishop Gabriel Charles Palmer-Buckle, who also addressed the meeting, expressed worry that some priests worsened the plight of mental patients by drawing early conclusions that the patients were under demonic attacks.

He said the current system which subjected widows to some rites contributed to some of them experiencing mental disorder.

Archbishop Palmer-Buckle called for effective collaboration between health professionals and religious leaders in the management and treatment of mental patients.

GCPS’s President

For his part, the President of GCPS, Prof. Anyetei Lassey, expressed worry that there were competent but unemployed Ghanaian doctors in the country, when it had been estimated that the doctor-to-population ratio stood at one doctor to 11,929 people.

That figure, he said, was a far cry from the World Health Organisation’s (WHO’s) recommended minimum of one doctor to 1,000 people.

Prof. Lassey said the ban on public employment, among other factors, had a lot to do with the approximately 12 times difference in the two ratios.

The Rector of the GCPS, Prof. Jacob Plange-Rhule, said the ability of Ghana to meet the health needs of its people would depend largely on the training of sufficient numbers of family physicians in a cost-effective way.

Therefore, he said, the college had introduced a modular training programme for doctors in district hospitals in family medicine, and indicated that the doctors would not have to abandon their duty posts for the programme.