By Muyid Deen Suleman
Kumasi, June 03, GNA – A 500-bed capacity mental health rehabilitation centre is set to be established at Asante Juaben in the Juaben Municipality of the Ashanti region.
The project, which is to be established by Mensah Mental Health Rehabilitation (Memhrep), an NGO, is to help cater for the health needs of the growing numbers of individuals being diagnosed with mental health problems in the country.
Memhrep’s main aim is to improve and maintain the well-being of persons with mental health problems by giving them quality health care, especially the most underprivileged in society.
The rehabilitation center after completion would accommodate and treat people with mental health needs and provide resettlement skills (vocational training) before reintegration.
It would consist of 500 capacity cluster beds, conference center, re-settlement center (workshops and apprentices training), a mosque, a Church, a clinic, and waste management plant.
Mr Adu Gyamfi, Founder and Director of the organization, made this known at a press conference held in Kumasi over the weekend.
The conference was under the theme “End to neglecting and homelessness of mental health patients”
Mr Adu Gyamfi said there had been growing concerns over the continued deterioration and deplorable conditions in which mental health patients found themselves in Ghana.
According to him, mental health patients mostly were exposed to the vagaries of the weather, poor sanitation and without necessities such as food, water, and shelter.
For this reason, he said, it was important to build an ultra-modern rehabilitation edifice to help government’s efforts at providing proper shelter and vocation for mental patients.
He said, some challenges faced by mental patients were associated with homelessness, discrimination, stigmatization and sometimes victims of road accidents.
“Mental patients have suffered enough in Ghana and therefore, the need to give them adequate attention and fair treatment”, he added.
Recounting his ordeal, he indicated that he once had a mental disorder due to excessive drinking and thinking, but today he had fully recovered and therefore, could not sit unconcern about affected individuals with mental disorders.
He said the cause of his mental disorder was due to family members’ ungratefulness and mismanagement of his wealth when he was away in Britain years back.
Mrs Esther Appraku, Director of Social Welfare at the Kumasi Metropolis Assembly (KMA), who spoke to the GNA, called on corporate bodies and philanthropists to join hands in the realization of the project by donating cash or building materials.
She also advised individuals who chained mentally health patients to treat at prayer camps, to desist from that and rather, send them to hospital.
Mrs Appraku noted, most at times, the problem of individuals having mental disorders was due to the brutalization at prayer camps.
A recovered mental health victim under Memhrep, Ms Linda Boateng, recounted how she was chained and brutalized by so-called prayer warriors at a prayer camp and appealed to the government to shut down all prayer camps in the country.
She also appealed to men who were interested in her to gather courage and propose to her because she had fully recovered from the metal problem.
GNA