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Outlook: Breaking Ghana's mental health shackles

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Breaking Ghana's mental health shackles

16/03/2020 GMT

BBC World Service - Outlook, Breaking Ghana's mental health shackles

Nurse Stephen Asante helps patients in remote areas - who are sometimes chained to trees

Psychiatric nurse Stephen Asante visits people with mental health issues in rural areas. They are often chained to trees by their families - who don't understand their condition

Psychiatric nurse Stephen Asante travels to rural parts of northern Ghana to provide vital support for people with mental health conditions. Here, he often sees people who are chained by their families. Shackling has been outlawed in Ghana since 2012, but is still commonplace in certain areas. It's hard to estimate how many people with mental health conditions are chained across Ghana, since so many of them are hidden away – but Dr. Akwasi Osei, of Ghana’s Mental Health Authority reckons that it's in the hundreds.

Stephen is fighting a battle against shackling. When he travels to remote areas – sometimes eight hours drive from the city of Tamale where he lives – he works with families to free people with mental health conditions from their captivity. He educates them to understand their loved one’s behaviour as an illness, and persuades them to allow them to receive medical help. Incredibly, he has now helped to free seven people across northern Ghana. He tells Outlook’s Rajan Datar about his work breaking the mental health stigma in Ghana.

Last week, we launched the BBC Inspirations Awards 2020 – and we're looking for your nominations for the world's unsung heroes. To get you inspired, we hear from Inspirations 2018 nominee Mbarouk Mussa Omar, of Pemba in the Zanzibar archipelago. He’s a nature-loving accountant, and when he noticed the forests in his home were shrinking, he decided to act – he has now planted two million trees on his mission to save his island’s flora.

And remember - to submit your nomination for the BBC Inspirations Awards 2020, visit bbcworldservice.com/inspirations. Be sure to check out the terms and privacy notice. Nominations close at 12 GMT on 9 April, 2020.

Pete Paphides is the son of Greek Cypriot parents who moved to Birmingham in the English Midlands in the 1960s to run a fish and chip shop. Pete felt caught between his parents’ culture and his own social world, and found solace in pop songs – he’s now a well known music writer in the UK.

Picture: Baba chained to tree in northern Ghana
Credit: Robin Hammond / Witness Change

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