Depressed individuals are at a higher risk of having serious mental disorders if things go worse, Dr. Richard Eghan of Nature’s Green Medical Centre has disclosed.

According to the Medical Practitioner, mental health disorders are more prevalent in our current dispensation due to issues ranging from economic, family, and relationship crises among others.

Dr Eghan said that persons “who have any of the conditions or symptoms of having mental health problems of any form need to seek help or timely psychological, psychiatric or medical intervention from an expert.”

The CEO of Nature’s Green Medical Centre at Taifa in Accra indicated that it was important for individuals living in a sound state of mind to constantly preserve their mental well-being to avoid any form of future mental disorders.

In an interview with The Spectator last week, he said “most mental health disorders are treatable, but required one to seek help if any state of abnormalities begins to show up.”

He cautioned persons living with or in close proximity with people with mental health problems to take safety and precautionary measures in their encounter with such individuals and must treat them in a welcoming way which would not lead to stigmatisation.

The Public Health Scientist said some persons living with serious mental and psychological health disorder could live a normal life in their daily day-to-day life encounter without any evidence or symptoms of abnormalities but could easily cause harm to an individual and treat them with respect to avoid stigmatisation.

“Imagine having a wife, girlfriend, husband or boyfriend who has serious depression or personality disorder whose symptoms could go out of control one day and bring serious harm to your life, yet the person seems normal to you because they have not shown any sign of aggression or violence towards you,” Dr. Eghan said.

He lamented that in Ghana, because much attention was not paid to mental health conditions and victims of mental health disorders, mental health patients may continue to suffer the symptoms of their conditions until they became completely insane.

 “The world is sitting on a ‘time bomb’ with mental health problems as the level of mental health issues keep soaring on a daily basis especially during this global COVID-19 pandemic period”, he stressed.

According to a global health statistics, about 792 million people lived with mental health disorder of some kind translating to 10.7 per cent of global population.

Dr. Eghan said those with living anxiety constituted 384 million people, representing 3.8 per cent of the population while depression accounted for 264 million people which is about 3.4 per cent of the population.

He said a data published also estimated that mental disorders are attributable to 14.3 per cent of death worldwide or approximately eight million deaths each year.

Mr. Nicholas Nartey, a mental health advocate who produced an award winning film titled “KORO” underscored the need for recovered mental health patients who have undergone treatment and are living a normal life in society not to be stigmatised.

By Alfred Nii Arday Ankrah