The Centre for People’s Empowerment and Rights Initiatives (CPRI) has stressed the need for stakeholders to safeguard the Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) of Persons with Mental Health Disorder.

It said persons with mental health disorders had the unalienable right to sexuality and reproduction and emphasised the need to ensure that they enjoyed those rights without impediment.

Mr Anacletus Seeninyin, the Programmes Advisor for CPRI, said this at a day’s orientation workshop for health services providers, including Mental Health Officers and Midwives in Wa.

“It is a known fact that less advantaged people are a group who have over the years not had their sexual and reproductive health rights acknowledged,” he said.

The workshop was organised by the CPRI in partnership with Basic Needs Ghana with funding support from AmplifyChange Fund under the “SRHR for Mental Health Project in Ghana.”

It was to sensitise the health personnel on the need for them to work towards ensuring that persons with mental health disorders enjoyed their SRHR.

About 40 health personnel from the Wa and Lawra Municipalities and the Daffiam-Bussie-Issa and Wa West Districts attended the workshop.

The 24-month project was designed to specifically target the sexual and reproductive health needs of persons with mental health disorders and epilepsy.

It is targeted to benefit 3,200 mental health disorder persons and 120 health personnel in the Wa and the Lawra Municipalities and the Daffiam-Bussie-Issa District of the Upper West Region as well as the Upper East, Northern and Greater Accra Regions.

Mr Seeninyin stated that the CPRI was working to “ensure an inclusive SRHR system that reaches out to the most vulnerable groups such as men, women and adolescent with mental disabilities/epilepsy.”

Madam Lillian Kuutiero, the Project Coordinator for Basic Needs Ghana, observed that the rights of persons with mental health disorder were abused with impunity by some unscrupulous individuals who forcefully slept with them, particularly the females, impregnated and left them to their fate.

She cited media reports in Ghana and other countries about persons with mental health disorder who were pregnant, delivered and breastfed their new-born babies, and questioned why society could not care for such people before and during the pregnancy.

She noted that mental health disorder person also had a sexual urge and had the right to satisfy that urge with dignity rather than being abused.

“Once someone sleeps with you without your consent, it is rape, the same way if you sleep with a mental health disorder person without his or her consent, it is also rape and an abuse of the person’s rights,” Madam Kuutiero explained.

She indicated that the project was to, among other things, build a stronger and more inclusive Civil Society Organisation movement for mental health and SRHR campaign and advocacy and to increase SRHR knowledge among vulnerable groups.

Some participants who spoke to the Ghana News Agency, commended the CPRI and Basic Needs Ghana for the orientation, saying it would help them in their advocacy and community sensitisation activities.