Mental Health In Crisis- 4 doctors in public sector (Front Page)

THE Chief Psychiatrist at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Dr Akwasi Osei, has observed that lack of psychiatric doctors in the country has made mental healthcare delivery problematic.
This is in view of the fact that at any time, between 30 and 40 per cent of the population suffer from one mental health problem or another.
He explained that the conditions ranged from minor mental illnesses, which were easy to treat, to the major ones, which were referred to as madness.
Dr Osei expressed these sentiments when the Daily Graphic contacted him to know more about the state of mental healthcare delivery in the country.
That followed the disclosure by Mr Evans Oheneba Mensah, an official of BasicNeeds, an international non-governmental organisation that supports mental patients in the country, that the lack of enough mental healthcare doctors in the country had, for years, prevented people with serious conditions such as schizophrenia, mania, severe depression, serious neurosis, alcoholism and epilepsy from receiving treatment.
Currently, Ghana has only four psychiatric doctors in the public sector, in addition to 11 others who are now on retirement but have been contracted to assist in the delivery of mental health care to the country’s 22 million people.
Two out of the four who are supposed to be in active service do not work as healthcare practitioners but as lecturers.
Dr Osei, who confirmed that the country lacked adequate numbers of mental healthcare doctors, said, “That is why we always cry out for help.”
The chief psychiatrist explained that many people in Ghana would not want to train as mental healthcare practitioners because of the stigma attached to mental health patients which, unfortunately, was usually extended to health personnel who cared for them.
He also mentioned the lack of risk allowances that were provided elsewhere in the world to motivate people to take up mental healthcare delivery as another reason that discouraged people from entering into that field in Ghana.
Dr Osei, however, hinted that there were currently six students who were undergoing training at the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons in Accra and were expected to come out between September and December this year.
The Daily Graphic learnt about the issue of inadequate mental health doctors when a team from the Kintampo Rural Health Training School (KRHTS) and an official from the University of Winchester (UoW) in the United Kingdom (UK), called on the Minister of Health, Dr George Sipa-Adjah Yankey, in his office in Accra.
Briefing the minister on the activities of KRHTS, the Principal of the school, Dr E. T. Adjase, in the company of Professor Jane Erica of the UoW, said there were plans to upgrade the school to a university college in the near future to enable it to introduce mental health education programmes, among other courses, in collaboration with the Hampshire Partnership NHS Trust (HPT) of the UK, as well as the UoW.
He said the objective of the initiative was to help all districts in Ghana to have middle-level specialist mental health workers in place over the next five to 10 years.
A special newsletter devoted to the Kintampo Project stated that there were plans to develop two new specialist education curricula at KRHTS, one for medical assistants in psychiatry and the other for Community Mental Health Officers, which would take 18 and 12 months, respectively, to complete.
In his remarks, Dr Yankey expressed surprise at the low number of psychiatrists in the public sector and gave the assurance that the government would provide all the necessary support for the school to begin the project.
He took the opportunity to commend the school for the work it had done over the past 40 years to train health personnel to serve the people of Ghana in various capacities.