As Ghana joins the world to mark World Mental Health Day on Friday, mentally ill patients in the Upper East Region cannot access Psychotropic medicines from health facilities.

This was made known at a media engagement organized by Basic Needs Ghana in Bolgatanga, on Thursday, to solicit support from the Media on how they could help advocate and promote mental health development issues in the Region.

The engagement meeting, which had the theme;”The Role of the Media in Promoting Mental Health Development in the Upper East Region” also revealed that all the District Health facilities, including the Regional Hospital had no designated wards for mental patients.

The Regional Coordinator for Mental Health, Mr Philip Aboagye, who disclosed this at the engagement forum, stressed that, if Government failed to pay serious attention to the problem of mental illness, particularly in relation to the shortage of drugs, it could worsen the situation.

Giving statistics of the mental situation in the Region, Mr Aboagye said between January and June 2014, this year, the region recorded 6,760 reported cases of mental illness and gave the break down as psychosis, 1,971 cases, epilepsy 2,988 cases, depression, 240, anxiety 263 and substance abuse 281.

He said the current staff-client ratio at the mental health unit was 1:165 and disclosed further that the Region had 27 mental health officers and 14 community Psychiatric Nurses, all in the 13 Districts of the Region.

Stigmatization, the Regional Coordinator noted, was one of the major challenges to mental illness, as families who have mental patients are being tagged mad people including Psychiatric Nurses.

Mr Bernard Azure, Projects Coordinator of Basic Needs Ghana, in charge of the Upper East Region, stated that, his outfit over the years, through funding from the Delegation of the European Union in Ghana, is implementing a project entitled “Promoting Inclusive and Empowered Civil Society to Advance Socio-Economic and Political Development in Ghana”.

He said the project had achieved some level of improvement in mental health cases, and that, Basic Needs Ghana, in partnership with the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service, have been collaborating to address mental health issues.

Mr Azure called on Media Practitioners in the region to embark on advocacy issues on mental health related issues and ensure that government speeds up the operations of the Mental Health Law to train more specialists in Psychiatric healthcare.

The stakeholders called on government to as a matter of urgency empower the National Health Insurance Schemes to enable them to reimburse service providers to ensure the provision of Psychotropic medicines for mental patients.