Psychiatrist
Dr Edward Nahim says there are 600,000 people in the country with one mental
health problem or another, and warns the number is increasing.
Speaking to Politico, Sierra Leone’s sole psychiatrist said the reason
for the growth in number was in part due to the recent Ebola outbreak leading
to post-traumatic stress disorder just as the civil war witnessed.
He said the most common causes were drug and alcohol abuse, as well as
depression emanating from unemployment and rural-urban migration with people
not able to cope with the stress of big towns amid the dashed hopes and
expectations.
Dr Nahim said that only five percent of people with mental
health problems in the country were reporting to the hospital with the rest
preferring to go to juju men, churches and traditional healers.
He said those who showed up at the hospital were mostly the
dangerous ones who had committed murder and arson and other crimes.
He said mental health patients were poor hence psychiatry was
not a popular branch of medicine with doctors preferring to pursue more
lucrative areas.
He pleaded with the public to stop stigmatising people with
mental health problems or history thereof.
He said they were under-resourced to look after their
patients but were coping to provide them with food, medicine and accommodation.
Dr Nahim has been looking after mental health patients for
almost four decades since the British and the Indian psychiatrists left. He has
retired but continues to work as a consultant on an annually renewable basis.
He told Politico that he was prepared to continue doing that“until when I die or whatever happens
that I cannot work”.
No comments:
Post a Comment