Many mentally ill persons and drug addicts roam the streets of the harbour and industrial metropolis by day whiles others have also turned unfenced school compounds into lodging places where also keep their ‘properties’ which are mostly rags and empty cans.

It is an open secret in the Metropolis that drug peddling and its usage is rife as sellers and users hide in culverts and dark alleys where there is no hindrance to their pursuit of ecstasy and fantasy.

Mr Pious Tay, Psychiatry Senior Staff Nurse at the Tema Manhean Health Centre made the call in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the Tema Metropolitan Health Directorate’s 2016 Performance Review.

   Mr Tay said it was the duty of the TMA to shoulder the cost for their taking off from the streets to the psychiatric hospital and rehabilitation centres.   He expressed the fear that psychiatric health providers in the Metropolis were yet to uncover the many mental health cases in the area.

He noted that service providers mostly stationed at the public health facilities in the Metropolis attended to 172 and 37 schizophrenic and depression cases respectively among other mental related illness in 2016.

The figure shows an increase over the 144 and 25 schizophrenic and depression cases reported in 2015.

He encouraged residents to visit the psychiatric departments with health issues related to mild depression, epilepsy, neurological conditions, nerves issues, migraine, and bio immune disorders.

Mr Tay said it was unfortunate that people associate psychiatric facilities to madness instead of seeking early treatment from them. He indicated that the Metropolis and its environs lacked a psychiatric admission facility therefore, serious mental health issues were referred to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.

He also complained that the facilities in the Metropolis also take their medications directly from the Accra Psychiatric Hospital which sometimes delay due to lack of release of government’s allocations on time.

The Psychiatric Senior Nurse also called for the posting of more medical officers into the Metropolis to take care of mental health as the current staff of two Clinical Psychologists, 10 community health nurses and a few other officials were not enough.