Ghana - chorzy umysłowo - Noor Images

63 year old Comfort Doddo is receiving prayers at Edumfa Heavenly Ministry Spiritual Revival and Healing Centre in the hope she will be healed of her mental health problem. Edumfa Heavenly Ministry Spiritual Revival and Healing Centre in Edumfa, Cape Coast, Ghana. It is purportedly the largest, most established prayer camp in the country. Christians from all over Ghana (and other African countries) come to the camp in the hope of receiving, through the power of The Lord, such ???blessings??? as sickness cured, and end to infertility, a job, a ministerial appointment, travel outside the country, and even money. It has become particularly well known for healing people with mental health problems. For a population of nearly 26 million, Ghana has only 13 practising psychiatrists in public service and one registered private practitioner. There are only three psychiatric hospitals all of which are in the south of the coastal belt of country, with few options for care outside these facilities. WHO, whose statistics the Mental Health Authority regularly cites, says that only about 3 percent of the approximately 2.4 million Ghanaians suffering from mental disorders are receiving care at medical facilities, that leaves more than 2 million outside the purview of sanctioned treatment ??" a great many of whom, even the most conservative estimates would concede, are seeking assistance at prayer camps and other informal sites. There are no official figures, but recent estimates put their number of prayer camps at several hundred. These camps operate with virtually no government oversight. In Ghana, as elsewhere, the stigma of mental illness is a poison that can saturate a social world, summarily mutating those contaminated, in the words of sociologist Erving Goffman, ??sfrom a whole and usual person into a tainted, discounted one.??? Photos Robin Hammond/NOOR. Ghana. 17 December 2016