The Chief Psychiatrist, Dr. Akwasi Osei is advocating the integration of physical and mental health treatments at all hospitals in the country. As far back as 1996, the Ministry of Health formulated a policy for hospitals treating physical ailments to also cater for patients with mental disorders, however this has not been implemented with specialized hospitals treating mental disorders. Dr. Akwasi Osei is pushing for the implementation of the policy on the occasion of the World Mental Health Day, saying that there is a false misconception that mental patients are too physical and should be treated separately. He said the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital for instance has no mental health wing, and so are many other regional hospitals. Dr. Akwasi Osei told Joy FM that the passage of the mental health bill will integrate treatment of physical and mental ailments for enhanced health care delivery, and will also reduce drastically, mental patients on the streets. “If we are able to pass this law, it will fundamentally overhaul the system, so it will not happen, the situation where we have only three psychiatric hospitals with a total of about 2,000 patients on admission and all these are located down south. So if you go up north, you don’t have any such facilities and virtually mental healthcare is non-existent up north. That situation should not arise. “If that happens, [mental health bill gets passed] patients we see on the streets will be a thing of the past because their ailment would have been detected much, much earlier in the course of the onset of the illness and would have been treated so that it does not get to the point where it degenerates and nobody gives care to them and they are on the streets and they seem not to be the responsibility of anybody as it is now.” Story by Joy News/Ghana