Africa-Press – Ghana. Despite global advances in disability rights, stigma towards individuals diagnosed with mental illness is common across the African continent. In Ghana, research has shown that one of the main roots of stigmatisation is the belief that mental illnesses are caused by supernatural forces, including spiritual punishment for parents’ misdeeds. As a result, Ghanaians with mental illness are often mistreated (sometimes violently), mocked by family members and even denied access to their children.
In some cases, parents abandon their mentally ill relatives, either locking them away in their homes or leaving them in spiritual camps where they may suffer abuse and neglect. Where facilities are available, some parents send mentally ill children to psychiatric hospitals.
Ghana has three main psychiatric hospitals. All are in the southern part of the country. But even in these cases, the patients are often abandoned for years on end, and healthcare providers themselves have been known to mistreat patients, deny them food and medicine, and even forcibly detain and physically abuse them.
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