Cured mental patients train in mushroom production

Mission of Hope Society with support from Basic Needs Ghana, a non-governmental organisation has trained 60 patients with mental illness in mushroom production in the Sunyani West District.

Forty additional women whose children have mental disorders in the district also benefited from the training to enable them fend for themselves and their families.

Mr Justice Samuel Adjei, Deputy Director, Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation of the Society, said this after presenting start up capital to the beneficiaries at Nsoatre.

It was an opportunity for some of the patients to meet and interact with Mrs Jane Cox, Director of Operations, Basic Needs, UK Trust and Mr Peter Yaro, Chief Executive Officer of Basic Needs, Ghana.

The executive members were at Nsoatre to access basic needs of the patients and how to support them.

Mr Adjei said with support from Basic Needs, the Society was working in 156 communities in 10 Municipal and District Assemblies in the Brong-Ahafo Region to assist people with all forms of mental disabilities to access drugs and empower them to become independent.

They are Asutifi North, Dormaa East, Techiman and Kintampo Municipalities, Kintampo South, Atebubu/Amantin, Sene East, Pru, Sunyani West and Sene West districts.

Mrs Sarah Adams Kyeremeh, a Community Psychiatric Nurse at Sunyani Municipal Hospital, said strict adherence to drugs could control and sometimes cure people with mental disorders.

She said the rate at which parents kept and abusing their children with mental illness at home was alarming in the Sunyani Municipality.

Mrs Kyeremeh said drugs administered tor mental patients were free and the hospital had enough drugss.

Mr Sampson Fordjour, a Retired Principal Nursing Officer at the Psychiatric Unit of the Brong-Ahafo Regional Hospital, said mental patients were stigmatized and because of this the unit found it a challenge to re-integrate patients who had gone through medication with their families.

Source: GNA