Government urged to prioritise mental health
Three Free State NGOs that take care of vulnerable people have told OurHealth that as a result of these costs they are unable to give patients adequate meals.
This comes amidst growing calls for the government to prioritise mental health institutions and increase their budgets. The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) released a report last week that accused the government of under-prioritising mental health issues, which makes people with mental health conditions vulnerable to abuse.
The Commission’s chairperson, Bongani Majola, said the government has neglected its duties to people with mental health conditions.
“People with serious psychosocial and intellectual disabilities tend to be forgotten by society,” Majola said.
Accommodation
This is evident in Botshabelo where there are only two mental health centres and they also service neighbouring townships, including Thaba Nchu and Ladybrand. Dukiso Gaza of Phuthanang Mental Health Institution said the centre houses 22 patients and rents a four-roomed house at R2,000 a month. They have extended the house with a shack to accommodate more patients.
Sometimes the patients survive on soft porridge for the day. The centre also depends on groceries donated by religious leaders and private companies during special days like Mandela Day to supplement the groceries they can afford.
Free State social worker Jessica Michaels said many families can’t provide the necessary care and support to a loved one who has a mental health condition and have no choice but to put them in a facility.
Patients at Tiisetso Mental Health Organisation in Section K could soon find themselves on the streets as their building is being sold by the owner. The NGO, which accommodates patients, whose ages range from 31 to 98, has been operating on a budget of R7,000 a month – of which R2,400 is for rent. The organisation’s co-founder Matsibela Ntwatsabona said it did not have an alternative plan yet.
The three NGOs have said despite applying for government funding they had not received any correspondence – and were all making a second round of applications.
OurHealth approached the Free State Department of Social Development for comment about assistance for the NGOs but the department did not respond, despite promising to do so. – Health-e News
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Government urged to prioritise mental health
by Teboho Setlofane, Health-e News
April 4, 2019
Related
HIV self test is easy to do, but you need courage
Knowing one’s HIV status has benefits but Free State activists say young people still dread administering self-tests.