Ghana - chorzy umysłowo - Noor Images

25 year old Odeneho Samson who is living with a mental health problem has been restrained with a leg iron outside. He???s been at Nazareth Prayer Camp for two weeks. He is prayed over in order to remove the spirits causing their ??smadness.??? Nazareth Prayer Camp, Akroso, Ghana. Nazareth Prayer Camp, Akroso, Ghana. 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. 21 December 2016