By: Benedicta Opoku-Pokuben17@gmail.com

Mental health is a state of mental well-being which helps people cope with the stresses of life, know their abilities, learn, work and contribute to the development of the community.

Mental health is also about our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also determines how we deal with stress, relate to others, and make choices making it very important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through to adulthood. Over the course of your life, if you experience mental health problems, your thinking, mood, and behavior could be affected which is termed as mental disorder.

Mental disorders include depression and bipolar. Over the years people either currently or at some point in their lives have had some sort of mental illness where by the love and care needed to help them deal with the condition is not given even by their own families. Is neglect the right way to help those in such a condition?

Currently in Ghana, until a person strips naked, mental health is not taken into consideration. Many organisations and institutions are working on the mental health project trying to spread the news about depression and it’s related health issues but it all runs down to the mentality and how important this particular topic is in our society.

Even most parents term to connect issues of mental health to spirituality and how wrong it is for a young person to complain of depression and anxiety.

These parents prefer taking young people to pastors rather than a health practitioner. Talking to Jessica Tiwah Safo,  a mental health advocate and founder of Adwenpa Gh, she explained some of the causes of  these mental health issues, she made it known that, every situation surrounding a human being can cause mental health trauma, these cases include, financial constraints, academics, peer pressure , broken homes,  divorce, barrenness , past experiences and broken heart  which is the most common  issue of mental health.

According to a research done by Dr. Atsu  Latey, founder of MindIT Mental Health service in 2020, an estimated 650,000 people living in Ghana are suffering from severe mental health disorder and a further 2,166,000 are suffering from a moderate to mild disorder. This means that , almost 98% of the  total population are suffering from mental health disorder.

The world Health Organisation and the Mental Health authority, in 2022, estimated that 3.1 million representing 10% of the population suffer a form of mental disorder or another with 16,000 of the cases being  severe .

This, research as of 2020 revealed that there are approximately 38 psychiatrists to serve the entire population of Ghana. Doing the maths, this means that, one (1) psychiatrist is equal to 800,000 Ghanaians. This enormous treatment gap makes it quite difficult to resolve issues concerning mental health.

Miss Tiwah, a mental health advocate said since the beginning of her foundation, the ages she has tackled most is from 10 – 30 years which constitutes the youth. Therefore to help such victims it is necessary to show them more love by being by their side in all walks of their life than neglect them to their own fate since this will worsen their condition.