Provide mental health facilities in all new hospitals
The Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Authority (MHA), Dr Kwasi Osei, has advocated the need for the Ministry of Health to ensure that provisions are made for mental health facilities in all newly constructed hospitals in the nation.
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He said failure to do so was a breach of the Mental Health Law 2012.
The Mental Health Law 2012, Act 846, mandates that all newly established hospitals must include mental health care in their facilities to take care of patients and integrate them into society.
Dr Osei said this at a two-day meeting on community mental care and strengthening integration of mental health into primary health care in Accra last Monday.
The meeting, organised by Basic Needs-Ghana, a mental health and development advocacy organisation, in collaboration with the Ghana Health Service (GHS), was on the theme, “Improving Community Mental Health Service in Ghana”.
Stigmatisation and discrimination
Dr Osei cited the newly constructed Ridge Hospital as an example of a facility that had no mental health facility; hence the project was a violation of the law.
“Before you realise they have already drawn the structures without consulting us, and this we’ve discussed with the ministry. When it happens that way and we go and discuss, they say it will be in the second phase. Why not in the first phase? That is already stigmatisation and discrimination,” he said.
Dr Osei said all existing regional hospitals must have a psychiatric wing made up of 10 to 20 beds.
Currently only the Volta, Brong Ahafo and Eastern regional hospitals of the 10 other regional hospitals have mental healthcare facilities.
He said there was the need to establish psychiatric hospitals in all the regions to bring treatment to the doorstep of the patients.
Dr Osei said the passage of the Mental Health Law gave the MHA the opportunity to put in place the necessary structures such as the mental board, a directorate of the authority; a mental health review tribunal and the regional and district mental health subcommittees.
He, however, emphasised that the ban by the government on employment was hindering the operations of the authority, since it was not able to get more people on board.
The Deputy Director General of GHS, Dr Gloria Quansah Asare, said the Community Health Planning Services (CHPS) compounds were to include mental care in their service delivery.
That, she said, would offer the vulnerable in the society adequate health care.
Patients must be included on the NHIS
For his part, the Chief Executive Officer of Basic Needs-Ghana, Mr Bismark Peter Yaro, said “the NGO implements and promotes initiatives to transform the lives of people with mental illness or epilepsy by providing access to integrated mental health care, social and economic services in the communities of Ghana”.
He advocated the inclusion of mental health care in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
That, he said, would help improve and maintain quality mental health care and delivery in the country.
The Greater Accra Regional Director of the Ghana Health Service, Dr Linda Vanotoo, called for a holistic approach to mental healthcare delivery.
