Today, October 10, is World Mental Health Day, a day set aside by the Health Organisation (WHO) to crate global awareness about the challenges people with mental illnesses face.
To commemorate the day, which this year focuses on �Mental health in primary care: Enhancing treatment and promoting health�, BasicNeeds, Ghana, a local non-governmental organisation, working with poor people with mental illness or epilepsy, has called on the government to pass the Mental Health Bill without any further delay.
The NGO, in a press release signed by its Country Programme Manager, Badimak Peter Yaro, said the passage of the bill would practical meaning to mental health and people with mental illness as contained in the manifesto of the ruling National Democratic Congress.
�As we celebrate World Mental Health Day, it is important to remind ourselves that mental illnesses are not respecter of persons,� BasicNeeds said.
�Mental illnesses occur in all cultures and do not discriminate in terms of age, and have a major impact on the physical health of people living with them.
�BasicNeeds says, as a development organisation, it had always emphasised community treatment and rehabilitation and expressed concern about human rights denial and violations that mentally ill people and their careers were subjected to.
�Over the years, BasicNeeds Ghana has been in the forefront of informing and equipping the grassroots mental health community to make certain that mental health and mental illnesses are considered. It has also facilitated the formation of a user association made up of stabilized mentally ill people and their careers,� the release said.
Source: Ghanaian Times
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