Mental Health Month: The Chayil Foundation holds workshop for widows in Dodowa

Founder of The Chayil Foundation, Eileen Ninson, has called on stakeholders in the mental health space to support widows in having access to psychiatric and mental health facilities using their NHIS cards.

According to her, the widows need to access mental health services in order to be diagnosed and given the right medication to help relieve their condition.

Mrs. Ninson reported that many widows in the country experience stress and depression after losing their husbands, often not seeing their deceased husbands’ remains.

Their sorry state, she believes, accounts for the marginalisation and stigmatisation of many widows in several parts of the country.

She made this passionate appeal when her foundation hosted a mental health workshop for widows in and around Dodowa in the Greater Accra Region on Saturday, May 17, 2024.

The theme for the workshop was “Movement: Moving More for Our Mental Health.”

Mrs. Ninson revealed that although May is a mental health awareness month, The Chayil Foundation already had plans in place to organise the workshop due to the enormous mental health struggles faced by women in general and widows in particular.

“We planned this at the beginning of the year; we have our programme outline ready. Yes, May is the month for mental health awareness, but the target group also speaks to the reason why we see the very need to do this, and based on the things that we heard from the facilitators, you will realise that they asked lots of questions, and so it was part of the guiding reasons, knowing what they were going through, that we decided to do this,” she remarked.

She said that the workshop was successful because the facilitators educated the widows on mental health issues while removing misconceptions and encouraging interactive questions.

“It has been very engaging and interactive; you could see that they had all sorts of myths that they were carrying and that they did not have answers to because they had not been exposed to these kinds of platforms, and I am happy that today we have followed through with our plan and that it has materialised, and people are leaving here with knowledge and with their myths that have been demystified and clarified,” she added.

Mrs. Ninson also urged NGOs to provide education and empower their employees, enabling them to forge ahead when managers are absent.

A clinical Psychologist of the Ho Municipal Hospital as well as a National Executive Member of the Ghana Psychological Association, Jones Kwasi Tagbor, expressed satisfaction with the success of a workshop aimed at improving the well-being of women.

Mr. Tagbor, who is also a team member at Mindup Ghana, which is a partner for the workshop, particularly expressed satisfaction with the insightful questions from the women, particularly in addressing the issue of stigmatisation, urging the partnership to continue.

“Personally, I am very happy about how things went and that the women have really learned a lot. They asked questions that were probing, and issues of stigma in mental health came up. Personally, I encourage this partnership to continue so that we can impact more people and also transform the issue of stigma. If we can break the stigma around it, it can help,” he said.

He further disclosed that some women initially believed mental health issues only referred to abnormal behaviour on the streets, but through the workshop, they have realised that excessive worry, stress, irritation, and sleeplessness are all forms of poor mental health.

He revealed that from a Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale 21 (DASS-21) screening that was carried out on the widows, it was observed that some of them went through mild states of anxiety and stress-related issues. According to him, the assessment was done considering the ages of the women.

Jennifer Ama Teiko Asamoah, a resident psychiatrist at Pantang Hospital, led a session on symptoms, signs, and management options for mental illnesses in Ghana, highlighting the need for further work in this area.

“There is still a lot of work to be done in the mental health sector with stigmatisation and more public education because they have very little knowledge about mental health illnesses,” she stressed.

She called on Ghanaians to seek early treatment for mental health conditions and requested that health authorities include mental health treatments in the National Health Insurance Scheme.

The mental health workshop is one of several initiatives The Chayil Foundation has embarked on in recent months, ultimately aimed at improving the financial and social wellbeing of widows.