MENTAL HEALTH DECREE OUTMODED (PAGE 32)

THE Medical Director of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Akwasi Osei, has noted that the Mental Health Decree (1972) is outmoded and must be reviewed because it makes no provision for the protection of the rights of mental patients.
He explained that although it was obvious that people who chained mental patients at prayer camps were clearly abusing the rights of the patients, they could not be prosecuted under the existing Mental Health Decree.
Dr Osei said attempts to rescue some mental patients from inhuman treatment at prayer camps had been met with rebuffs that that method of treatment did not constitute human rights abuse.
Dr Osei, who spoke to the Daily Graphic after presenting a paper on mental health at a workshop for journalists, said a review would allow the security agencies and hospital authorities to rescue mental patients from maltreatment at the hands of priests who violated their human rights.
He explained that most of the people chained at prayer camps were not people with mental illnesses but patients suffering from depression who needed expert advice to overcome their depression.
Sometimes the patients were denied food and given concoctions which almost amounted to poisoning them, he said.
He disclosed that the Accra Psychiatric Hospital registered 1,875 outpatients, most of whom were suffering from depression and not mental illnesses.
He hinted that about 20 to 30 per cent of the population had a sort of mental illness, which meant that four out of every 10 people had problems associated with mental illness.
Dr Osei said streetism, paedophilia and school phobia were all examples of minor mental illness which, when not controlled, could lead to major mental illness.
He expressed concern over the congestion at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, which he said was presently accommodating 1,100, instead of 600, patients, resulting in heavy work load for the doctors and psychiatric nurses who were woefully inadequate for the task entrusted on them.
He said a new concept of community psychiatric homes was being evolved to cater for the needs of mental patients in their communities, instead of the present system where mental patients had to move long distances to designated mental hospitals for treatment.
Dr Osei explained that the patients, after treatment, were abandoned in the hospitals and when they were later integrated into the society, they relapsed into their mental illness because their families were not involved in their treatment.
He said the new community mental homes would involve families in every stage of treatment so that when the medics withdraw, the families could take over and continue with the medication.