A non-governmental organization BasicNeeds Ghana, has attributed the poor state of mental healthcare delivery in Ghana to the inadequacy of funding that comes from government.

According to its Executive Director, Peter Badimak Yaro believes this development is stifling the attempts to improve the quality of livelihoods for people with mental health issues across the country.

He told JoyNews that, the only extra resources squeezed out of the district assemblies’ coffers by community mental healthcare units are sometimes based on personal relationships, a situation he believes is not sustainable.

Speaking on PM Express June 16, Mr Yaro explained that the lack of logistics mostly grinds the activities of community outreach to a halt preventing them from reaching families in remote areas with emergency response measures.

"They have to wait in their community psychiatry units and willing and capable relatives will find whatever ways they can to bring their relatives in crisis to be supported. And you can imagine when such patients are a bit aggressive or agitated and have to be brought by relatives to the unit for support. You'll see all sorts of ways by which they marshal and bundle the person to the place," he lamented.

Peter Badimak Yaro, however, called on the government to address these concerns coupled with improved stipends for officers, access to medications among others to accelerate the development in the mental healthcare space.

The Executive Director, highlighting the intensive attention on the novel coronavirus pandemic also drew the attention of the government to patients in other sectors and called for a 'target approach to some of the most vulnerable in society... even persons with physical disability have largely been marginalised to alleviate the impact of [Covid-19] on them."