The Accra Psychiatric Hospital has successfully returned a total of 240 cured mental patients in a period of five months. The hospital sent home the fifth batch of cured patients most of whom hailed from the Ashanti Region. So far cured mental patients from the Greater Accra, Central, Eastern, Western and Volta regions have been successfully reunited with their families. Hospital authorities say the decongestion exercise will involve 600 patients over a period of six months. Chief Psychiatrist at the Accra Psychiatric hospital Dr Akwasi Osei says patients from northern Ghana will be dispatched within the next two weeks. “As we are repatriating some, people from home realised that we were going to take their wards home so they came for them,” Dr Osei said. “We will continue the repatriation until we’ve sent a total of about 600 home. Then you’d have to relax a little bit and then you still continue until you have only 300 on the ward,” he emphasized. Dr Osei also indicated that six patients have been returned home because they could not locate their homes because they had spent years at the hospital. “The rest, they just come for reviews and they are doing fine,” he said. Source: Joy News/Ghana