Ghana: 'Prophets' Need Psychiatric Treatment, Sam Okudzeto Suggests

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Public Agenda (Accra)

8 August 2008
Posted to the web 8 August 2008

Frederick Asiamah & Jennifer Benewaa Adjei

Mr. Sam Okudzeto, a lawyer and human rights advocate has suggested that pastors who subject mentally ill persons to all kinds of abuses at prayer camps rather need psychiatric treatment.

There are revelations that widespread human rights abuses take place in several of the so-called prayer camps scattered around the nation, says a study by the Africa Office of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI).

According to the report, many of the 'prophets' professing to be spiritual healers take undue advantage of spiritual inclinations to maltreat mental patients at their prayer camps.

Flowing from this, Mr. Okudzeto, Chairman of the International Advisory Commission of the CHRI, says these prayer camp operators are very harmful to their mental patients and therefore need psychiatric examination.

He was speaking on Tuesday in Accra where the CHRI outdoored "Human Rights Violations in Prayer Camps and access to Mental Health in Ghana," a report of a study, which the CHRI conducted into the activities of prayer camps. The study sampled prayer camps located in three regions - Greater Accra, Central and Volta regions. The study was supported by the US Democracy and Human Right project.

Mr. Okudzeto, also a member of the Commonwealth Lawyers Association believes that the hash treatment of mental patients is a misconstruction of the word of God. He regrets that anyone who "wakes up" from his dreams says he has been ordained by God to heal and therefore sets up a prayer camp to heal.

He therefore advocated that people who violate the rights of mental patients at prayer camps should not go unpunished.

Presenting the findings, Nana Oye Lithur, Coordinator, CHRI Africa Regional Office, said that they chose to study the Greater Accra, Central and Volta regions because prayer camps were more pronounced in these regions.

Nana oye mentioned financial condition, socio-cultural influence, lack of education and difficult access to conventional psychiatric treatment as factors that influenced the decision to patronize prayer camps.

Nana Oye said, "People knew about psychiatric hospitals but saw prayer camps as more effective," adding that they saw mental illness as a spiritual illness, which could not be treated at hospitals.

She made mention of the fact that there were many prayer camps which abused the rights of mental patients through chaining and exposing them to the elements.

"They were not allowed to be visited because it is believed that the more people come to visit, the more evil spirits attack them," she added.

"We allow patients to visit hospitals after I have spiritually dealt with them," a prayer camp operator of Zion Prayer Camp Fellowship Center at Kommenda, Central Region revealed.

"I have been beaten several times for trying to express my views and am afraid it might happen again," a mental patient at Akofafa Prayer camp said.

On her part, Doris Appiah - Danquah, a recovered maniac depression patient said at the conference that she had received several stokes of lashes from the son of her prayer camp operators because she interfered in his affairs.

In an address read on his behalf, Maj. Courage Quashigah (Rtd), Minister of Health, said the ministry was aware of the dangers prayer camps posed. He recognised that they were causing great deal of physical harm as well as mental torture through agonizing and dehumanising treatments, which they meted out to patients.

He said the ministry's initial approach to solving this problem was the establishment of a directorate for the registration of traditional and alternative medical practitioners. Once they were registered, it should be possible to regulate them.

Secondly, the ministry was preparing various health bills that included a bill on traditional, psychic and faith based healers.

"We are aware that you are all waiting for the mental health bill" he said. But when the ministry started preparing the health bill, there were 18 of them and the Cabinet said they were too many and that these should be put into more manageable numbers. He said they repackaged and reduced the number to eight including the mental health bill as a stand-alone bill. Presently, the ministry was finalising the various bills.

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