Help the mentally ill.

Her clothes were tattered, her hair, dirty, brown and twisted like a nursery of sprouting seedlings.With an occasional smile and frown, she roamed bare footed on the streets, saluting anybody who cared to stare at her frightening image.

Ama Santo (not her real name)  has become the street monarch of Odorkor, her appearance strikes fear into every child. Her name is nightmare for disobedient children and a parent’s triumph card for children who  refuse  to obey instruction. In a good mood, she is the street sweeper, the dancer and the comedian whose rumblings split lungs.

Like Ama, there are many mentally derailed people  in our communities with no attempt to get them off the street. If not their families, the state has closed its eyes on them and allowed them to waste their productive years on the streets and in drains.

In the recent past, it was unusual to see many mentally ill men and women on our streets. They were either taken to the hospital or kept at home in order not to bring shame to the family.

This trend has changed so significantly that at every corner of the street you find yourself in Accra, you would definitely meet a number of “mad men” either lying down on the street, looking so dirty and sometimes naked or you would find them picking foods from the gutters and even on rubbish heaps.

Many mentally ill men have been abandoned by their families and left homeless and destitute. They do not eat or sleep in good environments, which put their lives in danger.

It is so pathetic to see your fellow brother, sister, mother, or father in that kind of devastating state.

The influx of mentally ill on the streets is a growing phenomenon in our dear motherland, in which the street has become the home and hospital of these ill persons.

 Several factors have paved way for this depressing development.

One of the countless challenges confronting effective mental health service delivery in the country is the problem of stigmatisation. Stigmatisation had not affected only the patients, but has affected their families as well as health workers including psychiatrists.

Stigmatisation has worn the interest of even medical students in the field of psychiatry, unless the government is prepared to give incentives to residents of psychiatry.Only a few medical students want to take up a position or major in the mental health sector due to the stigma attached to it.

Most people in the country consider mental illness as the preserve for drug addicts and people who are demonised. Mental health service over the past years had also been overlooked by many people including governments.

 The WHO estimates that approximately 650,000 persons in Ghana suffer from a severe mental disorder and further 2.17 million from moderate to mild mental disorders with a treatment gap of 98% of the affected population.

 Mental health care in Ghana is based in the South, while that of the North, I read about in a publication on the website of  Basic Needs Ghana, an NGO, is non-existent; There were only  few beds in the regional hospitals, with no psychiatrists, or just a few nurses to cater for them. Thus making all serious cases to be sent to the hospital in Accra for treatment.

Even in Accra, there is over reliance on psychiatric hospitals  to treat mentally ill people, and they are also relied on to deliver services for the whole country.

Anytime matters or issues of development are being discussed, the mentally deranged persons on our streets are forgotten about. These “mad men” on the streets poses threats to commuters or people who walk on the streets.

Ghana’s 1972 mental health decree strongly emphasised institutional care to the detriment of providing mental health care in primary health care settings, contradictory to both national and international policy directives.

The modern mental health bill which protects the rights of people with mental disorders and promotes mental health care in the country in accordance with international human rights standards which has been developed and currently before parliament to be passed into law, would go a long way to develop the country.

This bill, if enacted into law would help improve mental health care in the country, and encourage more health professionals and medical students to enter the mental health sector. The Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) even failed to recognise this perturbing situation. Most people have forgotten that unhealthy people would translate into an unhealthy nation, therefore the quest to eradicate poverty in the system would remain futile if proper mental health care is absent in the system. This is because mentally derailed persons are not allowed to work to increase productivity and contribute to the development of the country.

Mentally ill men have been left hovering around the streets posing danger to commuters and themselves as well.

Many have forgotten that these “mad men” were born like each one of us by a woman, who bore her in her womb for nine good months just like any of us.

The declaration on the rights of mentally retarded persons, proclaimed by the General Assembly resolution 2856 (XXVI) of December 20, 1971 indicates that the mentally retarded person has a right to economic security and to a decent standard of living. He has a right to perform productive work or to engage in any other meaningful occupation to the fullest possible extent of his capabilities.

This is something which is missing in some parts of Africa especially Ghana. Only a few number of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and individuals have taken it upon themselves to help save the lives of these mad men on the streets, and make them feel useful in the community.

Ghanaians who have disregard for the mentally ill patients on the streets should always remember that they (“mad men”) were once like them, and in every mad man, there is a potential drug addict, and slayer who can be the good cause of social vices and destruction of good things in the society.

 If they have nothing to eat and go very hungry, they would turn to robbing people in the society to get food, or pick foods from the dirty gutters, which is harmful to their health.

The sleeping places of these people are nothing to write home about; some sleep in the middle of streets, others in deserted damaged cars full of mosquitoes which affect the health of these vulnerable and ignorant ones.

The government must give the due support to organizations such as the Association of Ghanaian Professionals in Ireland (AGPI), and individuals who have put forth resources to help curb this sticky situation.