Document Type
Paper
College
Germanna Community College
Publication Date
4-2020
Abstract
Traditional practices and thinking of most Ghanaians, has kept them from accepting and adapting to the social needs of their mentally ill population. The mentally ill are no longer accused of being witches, hung, or killed, and although the way people perceive and react to the mentally ill, in general, has evolved since the periods of Sigmund Freud, other forms of persecution against them exist in today’s societies. These persecutions are in the form of stigmatization, discrimination, and marginalization. Through Individual stigmatization and structural stigmatizations of mentally ill people in Ghana, by the societies and communities in which they are found, many mentally ill people face abuse in prisons, on the streets or in under-resourced psychiatric hospitals because of Ghana’s lack of adequate mental health finances. Not a lot of solutions are available to solve a problem that is primarily rooted in the way that Ghanaian’s think. However, solutions that can be considered as a start to solve Ghana’s traditional ideas about the causes and treatments of mental illness begins with educating the people of Ghana on mental illness and establishing laws that will deter the media, companies and justice system from participating in structural discrimination or individual discrimination since both types of discrimination leads self-stigmatization.
Recommended Citation
Afariwaa, Rockling, "The Abodamfo: Ghana’s Marginalization of their ‘other’" (2020). Student Writing. 42.
https://commons.vccs.edu/student_writing/42
Included in
African Languages and Societies Commons, Health Policy Commons, Inequality and Stratification Commons, Infrastructure Commons, Psychiatric and Mental Health Commons, Public Health Education and Promotion Commons
Description
Rockling Afariwaa submitted this paper to the 6th Annual Student Research and Writing Symposium at Germanna Community College.
*3rd Place*
Copyright © 2020 by Rockling Afariwaa