MENTAL ILLNESS IN GHANA AND IT'S CAUSES.

Unfortunately, the mental states of individuals are not regarded very much in this part of the world. As I walk through the streets of tamale I see people with mental conditions walking around either naked or the offers who are privileged to be clothed are either walking around begging for food or taking from a waste bin.

Well, I won't say am surprised when everything is associated with superstition and the belief that the patient can never get better if taken to a psychiatric hospital. Could this be that we don't see people recovering from mental illness so maybe that's the reason why most of us are reluctant when it gets to that stage.

I remember I was in a tricycle(popularly known as yellow yellow) going home one time and when we stopped at the traffic a mad man came by asking for money from every driver and if you don't give him anything he won't move; he understood what he was doing. If in case a driver had given him and he came back the driver would tell him he has given him already and he will understand and then move on to the next person.

I wouldn't say I was surprised at his behavior but I was more shocked when one of the passengers in the tricycle said that his family member visits him from time to time to give him money for upkeep. I was baffled, they preferred their family member roaming on the streets of tamale than taking him to a psychiatric home where he can recover.

But that's not the case because they believe he was cursed or someone did that to him. So today I will like to Look at some of the causes of mental health problems.

What we should know is sometimes this mental illness, is not just illness but they are disorders and they can be managed and controlled.

The first and obvious cause of mental illness will be how the nerve cells function. This can be categorised into biological reasons. Most of the mad people we see walking around and we think he was cursed by a witch might have just run mad by the malfunction of his brain. When these nerve cells are damaged or injured the high possibility of the patient going bananas is inevitable.

Now the next and most worrying cause is the abuse of substances. These substances can be narcotics, weed etc. These substances when overused may cause the individual to lose his mental reasoning for the rest of his or her life. A drug that was meant to make you lose your senses for a couple of hours will end up destroying your entire life and it could have been prevented.

---

source

---

The last on my list is the victim going through a form of abuse in the past. There are many forms of abuse and some are sexual abuse. Sexual abuse is mostly downplayed because the people talking about it have not gone through what the victim went through. This can be for both genders. If a victim has been sexually abused in the past it remains as a dent or disturbance in the head of the victim for a long time and if the victim doesn't get help it might drive him or her crazy. In the case of children, it is more harmful as the child will grow up thinking he or she was just a sex toy and he or she begins to understand things he may be traumatized.

We see that mental illness doesn't have to do with anyone. We can see a mad man roaming the whole streets but he or she was well the previous day. So instead of looking down on them let us try to look for help for them so they become better.

Thanks for reading.