BasicNeeds Ghana applauded for expanding mental health outreach activities

By D.I. Laary, GNA

Accra, Aug 28, GNA - A leading mental health non-governmental organization, BasicNeeds Ghana, has embarked on mental health outreach activities to aid mental patients in Twifo-Praso to receive improved healthcare and boost their relationship with service providers.

The exercise was to create close and friendly relationship among mental health patients and doctors, as well as other health workers through regular engagements and interactions.

Senior Specialist at the Ankaful Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Kwaw Armah-Arloo described the programme a highly recommendable and great, and that, it would help the District health officials offer enhanced services to patients who could not access services from the country’s three main Psychiatric hospitals.

“The main aim for the outreach focuses on Doctors engaging with patients at the various districts and it has being achieved,” he said.

“Psychiatric Doctors normally remained in the three main government hospitals but through this outreach programme, they now get closer to the patients at the various districts to enable them to be examined well,” he added.

The Psychiatric Specialist, however, called for removal of numerous challenges facing the psychiatric hospitals to enable healthcare workers to provide optimum health services to mental patients.

He named acute shortage of doctors and supporting staff, insufficient logistics and medications and lack of motivation to attract young graduates into the psychiatric profession, as some of the many problems militating against effective and efficient provision of psychiatric services to patients in Ghana.

“There’s shortage of doctors and staff, the various hospitals are under-resourced and no motivation to enable the youth to be interested in the profession,” he said.

Dr Armah-Arloo called for a review of the free medical care for mental patients since government was finding it difficult to supply medications and logistics to hospitals for better mental healthcare delivery.

He also urged government to institute possible measures that would make the profession attractive to “the young ones” and ensure speedy approval of legislative instrument for the effective implementation of the mental health law.

The lack of progress in getting the LI approved for the past five years has impaired full implementation of the provisions of the Act (Act 846) passed in 2012 to provide effective and efficient mental health delivery.

Persons with mental illness are supposed to have separate wards at health facilities but that is not the case due to lack of required infrastructure and logistics.

Mr Sunday Anaba, the Project Officer of the BasicNeeds Outreach Programme, said the programme helped bring together several core mental patients in hinterlands and various prayer camps in the district to receive treatment at the hospital.

“The modules of BasicNeeds, is to attend to the needs of all persons with mental disability and give them treatment, we build their capacity to help them access improved livelihoods,” he said.

BasicNeeds has expressed its desire and prepared to offer more assistance to mental patients, however, it is constrained by funding to reach the many Ghanaian remote communities to offer help to patients who cannot access services from distant health facilities.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is funding the project titled: “Strengthening non-formal services and practices to enhance community mental health in Ghana.”

He called on other funding agencies to support BasicNeeds to reach out to many more communities and step up its advocacy in curbing problems confronting mental healthcare patients in the country.

Participants also commended the outreach programme for its assistance to the District, mental patients and the Hospital, and expressed the wish that similar NGOs in the field would emulate BasicNeeds to improve services and cut down stigmatization facing mental patients.

GNA

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