Vice President John Dramani Mahama has attributed the deteriorating mental health regime in the country’s health facilities to lack of interest in the pursuit of psychiatry health by Nurses and Doctors. “Mental health has not been attractive to most of our Nurses and Doctors and therefore the patients do not receive the necessary attention at various facilities and government will need to encourage them to indulge in it.” Vice President Mahama said this when a delegation from the Yale Global Health Initiative in the United States and officials of Ghana Health Service called on him at the Castle, Osu. The delegation, which was accompanied by Mr Rojo Mettle-Nunoo, Deputy Minister of Health, was at the Castle to present a survey report conducted by the Initiative on Mental Health in the country and progress of work on the mental health reforms. Vice President Mahama said the Government would provide adequate measures to ameliorate the mental health situation in the country. He mentioned some of the measures as the expansion of mental health infrastructure, provision of incentives to health workers and the provision of effective working environment to encourage more health workers to specialise in mental health issues. Vice President Mahama said the Government would also encourage Parliament to expedite action on the passage of the Mental Health Bill into an Act to make it an effective working document. He said the current Mental Health Hospital in Accra Central which was built in the colonial era had outlived its usefulness and that the Government would fast track the expansion and provision of modern facilities at the Patang Psychiatric hospital. Professor Elizabeth Dradley, Director of the Yale Global Health Initiative, expressed dissatisfaction at the state of the country’s psychiatric hospitals and appealed to government to provide basic sanitary facilities in those facilities. She said their survey revealed that 90 per cent of the mental patients at various health facilities suffered from severe psychiatric distress which needed governmental intervention and support in subsequent years to reduce the incidence of mental cases in the country.