Psych Hospital - Home for mentally-challenged children?

-Reflections after a recent visit to the children’s ward at Accra’s Psychiatric Hospital with a reporter from the Daily Dispatch newspaper -

Standing in front of the children’s ward at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital a flurry of excited voices can be heard from behind a large, wooden door.

The noise is similar to that heard at a playground.

Beyond the door however, the scene is quite different. There is no slithering down slides, swings swinging or teeter-totters tottering.

Instead, fourteen children living with various mental and physical disabilities, including mental retardation, polio, epilepsy and hunchback, are scattered across the barren, concrete grounds. A potent stench of vomit lingers in the background.

One boy stands staring intently at his hands, twitching his fingers in front his eyes. Another leans against a wooden post, his body folded in half as he rests his entire torso along his legs. The child is apparently completing his daily exercises.

A woman, known as YaYa, who is 46-years-old with the mental capacity of a toddler, sits hunchback along a bench, head bowed. When approached she lifts up her face to boast a huge toothless grin. She is the ward’s eldest patient and has resided there for 28 years, after being dropped off by her mother. Her condition supposedly developed after she fell from a bed at three months old.

According to nurse, Christie Brown, the number of patients in the children’s ward has doubled since she began working at the hospital five years ago. The majority are either dropped off by family members or found abandoned outside. Nurses name those who are unidentified, based upon the day and nature of their arrival. For example, one boy was named Kofi Strike because he brought in on a Friday during the nurse’s strike, while another girl was named Ama Peace because she was brought in on a Saturday by PEACE FM.

“Their future is unknown because they are here,” explains Miss Brown, adding that staff has to plead with parents to visit. “We have taken them on as our own children, so they also love us. We don’t reject them.”

“It’s a big problem, they become hospital property, they die off, they have nowhere to go,” says the hospital’s Medical Director, Dr. Akwasi Osei, adding that he aims to treat his patients and send them home. “They are not really supposed to be here. We are not supposed to house mentally retarded people.”

Though the children’s ward may seem chaotic, the nurses (there are at least two on duty in eight hour shifts, with two assistants, at any given time) appear calm and the children follow a regimented daily routine. They are awake and eating breakfast by 7:30 a.m., lunch is at noon and following playtime and dinner, bedtime arrives early at 6:45 p.m. There are about three children to a room and each has their own bed.

Food served includes cocoa, rice and ‘wakye’ (aka. wocheh). There is even a school on the premises staffed by specially-trained teachers through the Ghana Education Service. About half the children attend daily from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., while the others remain inside the ward.

According Dr. Osei, each child costs hospital about US$5.00 per day. Social Welfare provides about 60 cents per patient/per day for food, while other necessities including clothing, toiletries, medicines, toys and a TV (which is rarely watched) are provided by the hospital itself or NGO donations.

When asked what would happen to these children if they released back into society, Dr. Osei explains that given the stigma in Ghana surrounding the mentally handicapped and that they have been deserted by families, the hospital is the best place for them.

“If not here, they would be abandoned in town,” he says. “This place is the lesser of two evils for them.”

Alexander Tetteh, National Administrator for the Ghana Society of the Physically Disabled (GSPD), disagrees, insisting these children have basic rights just like any other human being.

“It’s just like living in a prison. It’s very discriminatory against their human rights,” he says. “Children with disabilities are not a curse. It’s not a crime.”

Tetteh identifies with the parents’ struggle explaining that not only are there no support services in Ghana for mentally disabled children and their families, but there is also the pressure from other family members and communities, who reject these children and those who conceive them. His suggestions include educating society and providing families with facilities that offer assistance and advice on how to successfully raise mentally-challenged children.

“It’s the government’s responsibility to take care of the vulnerable,” he says. “(Mentally disabled children) can be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society and society can benefit from them. No human being is useless.”