People & Lifestyle
Ghanaian student at Columbia University sheds light on Mental Health in Ghana
As the world celebrated mental health this week, Essie Quakyi is a second-year MPH student in the department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health has shared the untold and unheard story of mental health in Ghana on the school’s official website. Elsie graduated from Brown University in 2014 with a degree in Human Biology and is the founder of Imagine Ghana, a non-profit aimed at providing underserved young students with career guidance. Following graduation, Essie plans to move back to Ghana to create policy and structural changes in public health. Read her article below: In March, Jennifer Nyarko, a student at the University of Ghana Legon jumped to her death from the fourth floor of student housing. Images of her inconsolable father wrought with grief filled my Facebook timeline, and for the greater part of two weeks, Jennifer’s story sent an entire nation into mourning. More enduring was the unavoidable tone of shame that laced all discussion of her decision.
Talking with a student from Obom in the Eastern Region of Ghana. But not much of this story was new. The week before, another student in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi took her own life, and the cycle of media coverage, Facebook shares, and short-lived grief followed. A year and a half ago, while studying for an exam, a series of mental illnesses drove me to a mental breakdown. A combination of two years of depression and more recent anxiety was compounded by my upbringing in a society that fails its mentally ill. Ultimately, this led to the deterioration of my health and a very long recovery. I was suicidal, and I was scared. When I brought it up to those around me, I was either met with pity or the cold shoulder of stigma, but I was not the first nor last person to feel such isolation. Ghanaian society speaks about mental illness in a way that perpetuates stigma and a fear of those that suffer from it, and most would rather bear in silence than be labeled as “crazy.”
AVOIDING DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS
Mental health is a seldom-discussed topic in Ghanaian culture. It makes people uncomfortable. When mental illness is talked about, the conversation is lacking in ways that raise awareness, foster advocacy, and lead to meaningful change. Even government spending on mental health reflects the priority attached to the issue, with a mere 1.4 percent of the total health budget allocated to mental health. Isolated, understaffed, and poorly-maintained psychiatric facilities is the only picture of mental health that most are familiar with in Ghana. When I sit in my public health classes at Mailman, I am faced with similar questions as when I visit family in Ghana: how do we fix urgent public health concerns if people aren’t even willing to talk about mental health? Malaria and cholera are easier, because pills and sanitation are relatively acceptable remedies. But what about an illness whose prevention and treatment are much more complex because they aren’t easily detected?A WAY FORWARD
![School-aged kids playing soccer in Ghana. Ghana, mental health, mental health communication](https://i0.wp.com/www.mailman.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/jpg/essie_quakyi3_218x312.jpg?resize=218%2C312&ssl=1)