Free yourselves from Mental Slavery - Ghana's Mental Health in Crisis

I’ve been reminiscing about the good ol’ days, during my first few years in Ghana, when I lived an entirely different life… The days of the compound of 54 people, all Ghanaian except me, all living in single rooms surrounding the common space – a concrete square that at one time had a big tree growing out of the centre for shade. (That was hacked down in the rage of one of the adult sisters in the family along the way, no doubt getting back at others for some or other trivial dispute). But that is another story.

We had quite motley crew of family members and random tenants among the 54 of us, and there are definitely stories enough to fill a novel… maybe one day!
Today I remember Sistah Konadu. A sweet and well-meaning girl in her mid-twenties, with a large frame and a tiny voice, she wasn’t actually living full time with us, but apparently had problems with some other members of the family who lived elsewhere, and sought refuge with us many times.

Konadu was slightly ‘mad’ as the family affectionately described her. I found out later, mostly from observation, that she was clinically a schizophrenic. I imagine the medicines in Ghana are expensive or not available, had there even been a proper doctor to make such a diagnosis in the first place.

One afternoon as we sat in our little room, bathed in sweat, fanning ourselves, there came a big noise from the compound. A woman’s voice shouting frantically, “You! Think you can hide in a chicken disguise?! You are the devil! I see you! Evil chicken!” We peered through the dusty slat windows to see Konadu, dressed in her best cloth and jewelry to match, running in circles, chasing some benign neighborhood chickens with the fury of an exorcist. The children were running behind, jostling and poking each other, falling in tiny clumps of laughter. Some of the adults poked their heads out into the yard and called for Konadu’s mother to fetch her to the asylum. It seemed the illness had reached some sort of peak and she was dragged, warning us all of the dangers of the little devils among us, with the help of some strong guys around the area, into a taxi and off to what they called the Asylum. Sounded pretty scary to me. Little did I know.

Konadu disappeared for a few weeks. When she came back she was dull, thin, her skin grayish and the corners of her mouth sagged. She looked highly drugged. The fire in her eyes was gone.

What we didn’t know at the time was that she had been chained by her ankle to a large heavy metal ball on the floor in what constitutes a cell. Some patients are chained to car batteries or any other heavy unmoveable objects.


This is rehabilitation?! The conditions in Accra’s only Psychiatric Hospital – the Asylum – make the horrors at Korle Bu and others look like a hotel. There is even less funding for these hospitals around the country, not to mention a huge stigma. The patients are fittingly referred to as inmates and as I read in an article published on AllAfrica.com, the regional director of CHRI (Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative) explained:

“the treatment includes chaining, denial of food, verbal and physical abuse, isolation and forced medication. According to her, their research revealed that the incidence of chaining up the mentally disabled constituted a feature of the healing process.”

What is equally disturbing is what I read on the front page of the Daily Graphic (whose website is currently under construction), Ghana’s largest newspaper TODAY. Ghana’s ‘Mental Health in Crisis’. The article goes on to explain that for the 22 million people in Ghana, of whom they figure 30 -40 % will suffer some form of mental health problem during their lives, have 2 – that’s TWO qualified and practicing Psychiatric doctors to attend to them. Statistically that is one doctor per 11 million people. Do I need to write how dismal that is? Apparently there are actually 4 doctors in the country, but two are lecturing at Universities rather than practicing.

So what happens over at the Asylum to the thousands of ‘inmates’? No doubt they are guarded. Doubtfully they are fed, (unless family members come to visit and bring meals to them), but no chance are they being treated by a doctor. And that is sad.
I haven’t seen or heard from Konadu in ages. She had a baby and got married and was on her ‘medicines’ that last I knew. God forbid she relapse and need medical attention.

With all the hue and cry about the atrocities of slavery during the early colonial days, here we are in modern Africa, where citizens are being enslaved, in their minds and by the literal chains that bind them. The treatment of the mentally ill in Ghana is one of those dirty little societal secrets, on the bottom of anyone's list in terms of making changes, and in the dark ages in terms of cultural attitudes. God help them, those who cannot help themselves, for no one else will.

I've got a bone to pick with Oprah

I guess I've got a few bones to pick with Oprah. All of them involve her 'work' in Africa. The most recent applies to her touching story of October 2006, where her correspondent comes to Ghana, West Africa to investigate the horror of child trafficking and child slavery. I hate to say it, but what a joke!! No westerner will understand me unless they can get a feel for what I've seen here, absorb what is Ghana and what it is not, and what makes it tick. It's all welll and good for Oprah to help Katrina victims in the States, and get involved in domestic abuse issues. She is great at fulfilling dreams of middle Americans, but it becomes much more dangerous and highly inappropriate when she and her well meaning crew decide to take on the world! The world is not America, and the diversity in cultures is something she can only pay lip service to, and never hope to skim the surface of understanding.

This article can be found on the Oprah site, complete with pictures and touching words.

But it's empty. It takes the Western ideas of childhood and security, and pulls at our heartstrings by showing us the faces of seemingly innocent children whom we relate in our hearts and minds to our own. The truth is that these children live in a whole different world. Their parents have 5 to 20 children. They are poor to a level which is uncomprehensible to Westerners, they sold their own children for $20 or whatever minimal amount, just to have one less mouth to feed. They do not want these children back. Life is no better for them once the righteous NGO's of the world have gotten involved for a week or a month and liberated them. The truth is that the foreigners go away, and life goes back to normal and there's still no money and no moral obligation for the parents to keep from selling them again. The article mentions how the Government of Ghana is trying to change the plight of these kids. That is absolutely false. That I can guarantee with my eyes closed. They may make convincing speeches to guarantee the continued influx of foreign aid, but the truth is that the government here is more concerned with sending the children of it's core members to Yale and Harvard, and buying bigger and better vehicles. There is no welfare system in Ghana. It is a survival of the fittest out in the villages here. We are working at a level so far removed from the West, that the West's solutions are absurd and useless here. In Ghana when a child dies, the funeral is small or non-existent compared to an aged person. This is because there is an intrinsic belief that the life of a child is worthless. Only when someone has survived this life for many years are they respected.

There is also a level of ignorance in the villages that defies western understanding, and is not going to change in the near future. Rural communities have been subjected to the World Health Organization's campaigns to end malaria for decades. Still, a recent study in Northern Ghana showed that the majority of adults had no idea of the link between mosquitos and malaria. Babies are born, and many times the correlation between sex and procreation is not made! Babies die, and people believe they or the family has been cursed.

Ghana is a society which still has tribal shrines where families are obligated to give up their children to the ownership of the lead medicine man, to atone for sins of their forefathers. Ghanaians have no problem with these customs. They are old and they represent traditional culture, and if change will come, it must come gradually. Oprah and her crews are like band-aids that dontt stick, placed on gaping wounds. It just won't work.



I can guarantee that the seven children saved from slavery by one of Oprah's viewers, will suffer at their new orphanage and that the Orphanage owner will benefit personally and without guilt from the donations that will follow. This is Ghana.
More bones to pick later...