Women would benefit from Mental Health Law

Daily Graphic. Pg 11, Tues. June 30

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

KWANSEMA was 36 years old when she had her third child. She was diagnosed a few days later with postpartum depression, a mental disorder which affects some women after delivery.
Efforts to get her cured immediately with orthodox medicine proved futile and her husband abandoned her to her fate when her family took her to a prayer camp for deliverance. The family believed that she had either been bewitched or she was a witch.
At the camp, her right as a human being was abused . She was chained to a tree to prevent her from exhibiting wild behaviours and she was also physically and sexually abused.
Presently, Kwansema, like many other women in the country who experience mental disorders one way or the other, do not have any protection from the current Mental Health Law operating under the National Revolutionary Council Decree (NRCD) 30 of 1972.
The law does not mention human rights issues to enable such people to seek redress but only mentions that women with such conditions should be given separate accommodation.
Also, the law does not make any reference to mental patients outside the psychiatric hospital and therefore such patients are left to their fate either at the hands of traditional healers or pastors.
It is for this reason that the acting Chief Psychiatrist and Medical Director of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Akwasi Osei, together with some other health personnel, advocates and well meaning Ghanaians are advocating for the law on mental health to be passed as soon as possible.
At a forum on ‘Women’s right and mental health in Ghana’, organised by the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) in Accra, Dr Osei said the law was drafted three years ago but was yet to be considered by the Minister of Health.
He said the law had specific provisions for women and children who were considered as vulnerable groups, saying that the law specifically criminalises stigma, discrimination and other human rights abuses.
According to him, the law criminalises forced marriage, forced labour and sexual abuse at prayer camps and decriminalises suicide, explaining that most suicide cases were a result of depression which he said was a mental condition and therefore under the law such people would be treated and counselled instead of imprisoned.
Also, he said the law would ensure that people like Kwansema could maintain their marriage, or at least would not be disadvantaged in marriage on grounds of mental illness. Added to this, they could exercise their franchise to vote as determined by their psychiatrists.
Dr Osei said the new law would also overhaul mental health care and de-emphasise institutionalisation by ensuring that people with mental cases were rehabilitated in their communities.
He said the law would also help to decentralise mental health care by ensuring that regional and district hospitals have psychiatric units attached to them.
The law, he said, would also regulate the activities of pastors and prayer camps to help curtail the numerous abuse of human rights in such camps which also serve as rehabilitation centres for some mental patients.
He said the law would also ensure that more mental health workers are put in the system saying that presently, the country had only seven psychiatrists made up of five permanent doctors of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and two retired ones of which one is a private doctor.
The law, he said, would also ensure that adequate resources were made available to the psychiatric institutions so that they would be able to give better health care to their patients.
According to him, the time had come for the country to take the issue of mental health care in the country seriously saying that it was a condition that could affect anybody at any time.