Dr Dennis Daliri, the only Specialist Psychiatrist serving the Upper East Region has mentioned that the region has a lot of backlog as far as mental health is concerned.
Dr Daliri made the comments on the Day Break Upper East Show on A1Radio. He was speaking on the state of mental health in the Upper East Region.
“The precipitating factors of mental health are predominantly social issues; and you realized that the Upper East is actually regarded as one of the poor regions in the country. We’ve a lot of people going around not really having anything to do as far as employment is concerned. You’ve a lot of people who wake up and are even struggling to see if they’d be able to feed once a day. You’ve a lot of people who’re sick and are even wondering if they’d be able to get money to finance their treatment.
All these social challenges coupled with the current economic hardship that we find ourselves in as a country which the Upper East is not immune to; these precipitate mental health conditions and to that extent you can imagine how much of a toll the Upper East would be suffering.”
He says that a lot of people in the region are down with psychosis and resort to using substances such as alcohol, marijuana, tramadol and many others to ease their stress. These people, according to Dr Daliri, end up becoming addicted.
“In putting all these things together we have a huge burden of mental illnesses in the region especially considering our poverty levels”
Despite the huge burden of mental illnesses, Dr Dennis Daliri is the only Specialist Psychiatrist serving the about 1.3 million people in the Upper East Region.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Osuman Kaapore Tahiru|Ghana
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