Accra, Dec 26, GNA – Trust Jesus Foundation (TJF) has feted patients of the Pantang Psychiatric Hospital as part of efforts to bring mental health into the national conscience. The exercise, which coincided with the fifth anniversary celebration of the foundation, offered the patients a sense of acceptance and belonging as equal members of the Ghanaian society. In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Thursday on the sidelines of the occasion, the Founder and President of the foundation, Ms. Mary Wormenor, observed the need for mental patients to be encouraged through such gestures since it had a positive impact on their health. “In putting a smile on the faces of mental patients, we help them to understand that society loves them and sees them as part of the community irrespective of their situations.” Ms. Wormenor indicated. She therefore called on the government to prioritise mental health care issues and implement the Mental Health Act 2012, Act 846 which sought to improve Ghana’s mental health delivery .
“We are also calling on the government to invest more in the training of psychiatric specialists in Ghana,” she said.
In a talk during the programme, the Health Coordinator of TJF, Mr. Seth Wormenor, asked Ghanaians to be observant in order to detect mental challenges which early diagnosis resulted early healing.
Mr. Wormenor, also the Mental Health Coordinator, Adanse South District in the Asante Region, suggested that persons who were developing mental challenges might not know until others detect it hence the need to lookout for changes in the lifestyle.
Receiving some of the donated items, a Principal Nursing Officer at the Pnntang Hospital, Mrs. Vivian Anim Bonnah, said such gestures as caring for mental patients was very necessary because some of them had been abandoned by family and friends.
“Some of them don’t get visitors at all and it makes make them feel rejected.
Such visits make them see new faces and reassure them of the fact that there are persons who still had them at heart which has a profound mental and psychological impact on them,” she indicated.
Mrs. Bonnah who is also an Executive Member of Mental Health Nurses Group National, appealed to the government to invest more in mental health institutions which will go a long way to take away the many challenges facing the sector and improve upon mental health care delivery in the nation.
She observed that even though mental Healthcare was supposed to be free, it had rather become more expensive with patients and their relatives, struggling with high costs of drugs and other necessities.
This, she indicated, was because the quota given to psychiatric health institutions and units in the nation was not enough.
The Principal Nursing Officer asked that mental health care be taken seriously “because it could be anybody tomorrow and that without mental healthcare there is no healthcare.”
As part of the exercise and anniversary, the foundation provided the patients with Jollof Rice with Chicken with assorted drinks.
Members of the group also had a procession through some principal streets of Accra with placards that educated the public about mental health.
Some deserving members of the association were honoured for their selfless service.
GNA