BASIC NEEDS CALL FOR MORE SUPPORT FOR MENTAL HEALTH (PAGE 21, DEC 16)

WHEN the world celebrated the Human Rights Day on December 10, 2009, many civil society and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in northern Ghana intensified their respective advocacy programmes to ensure the fundamental human rights of the individual.
Basic Needs is one non-governmental organisaion (NGO) in Ghana that has over the years initiated programmes to satisfy the needs and safeguard the basic rights of mentally-ill persons, their carers and families.
It called for increased government intervention in the area of mental health, a sector that it believes has been neglected for too long.
In that regard, the organisation outlined a number of educational activities to mark the Day and to draw the attention of the Government towards the quick passage of the Mental Health Bill into law to ensure increased government commitment to mental health.
Through funding from the Assisting Communities Together (ACT) project of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Basic Needs drew up a number of activities aimed at raising awareness among school pupils about the rights of mentally ill people.
Debates, training programmes, distribution of literature with messages about human rights issues involving particularly mentally ill persons were carried out.
A training programme was organised for 40 students from senior high schools in the Tamale metropolis.
The beneficiary schools were the Tamale Senior High (TAMASCO), Ghana Senior High (GHANASCO), Northern Business Senior High (NOBISCO), Business Senior High (BISCO), Vitting Senior High, St. Charles Senior High, Kalpohini Senior High, Islamic Senior High, and Presbyterian Senior High Schools.
Other activities the organisation carried as part of the celebration of the day included radio discussion programmes for children affected by mental illness and abuse.
The discussion programme was aimed at educating the public on human rights issues and would be aired on radio once every week for four weeks.
Basic Needs has so far supported 18,186 persons with mental illness and epilepsy to enable them to organise themselves into self-help groups.
According to the Knowledge and Communications Officer of Basic Needs in Tamale, Mr Bernard Alando, 160 Community Based self help groups and 23 district associations had been formed in the three northern regions and Accra.
“We believe, as we mark the Human Rights Day every year, we need to safeguard the rights of the mentally ill persons,” he pointed out.
The promotion and protection of human rights has been a major preoccupation of the United Nations since 1945, when the organisations’ founding nations resolved that the horrors of the Second World War should never be allowed to recur.
The Human Rights Day marks the anniversary of the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Over the years, a network of human rights instruments and mechanisms has been developed to ensure the primacy of human rights and to confront human rights violations wherever they occur.
This year’s theme: “Embrace diversity end discrimination” is apt, considering the level of stigma attached to the vulnerable in the society.
The UN General Assembly’s resolution 46/119 of December 17, 1991 talks about the principles for the protection of persons with mental illness and the improvement of mental health care.
Article six of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”.
It, therefore, behoves the Government, stakeholders, individuals, civil society groups and non-governmental organisations to put in place effective mechanisms that would safeguard the rights of the mentally-ill as well as the physically challenged persons.