By Dennis Osei Gyamfi, GNA
Accra, Nov 21, GNA - Students from some selected Senior High Schools (SHS) in the La Dadekotopon Municipal Assembly (LaDMA) have been cautioned about the mental illness associated with substance and drug abuse.
Reverend Robert Bulley, General Secretary of the Mental Health Association of Ghana and a former drug addict, sounded the alarm to students of St Thomas Aquinas, Labone SHS, Armed Forces SHS and La Presbyterian SHS at a mental health programme organised by Star Coalition in Accra, on the theme; “Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World.”
Rev Bulley, who have survived after 25 years of abusing drugs and substance, told the students that he had regretted wasting his life for the years that he had engaged in drugs and substance abuse.
Recounting his ordeal, he advised the students to be careful of their friends, because he was introduced to drugs by his peers at the Secondary school days in Achimota SHS.
He said he grew in his addiction to drugs as he climbed up higher on the social ladder having risen through the ranks to become a field marshal with the Black Star line ship.
He said he lost everything he had built in his life including family, property and job because of the mental illness.
He noted that he was lucky been saved by religion after going through counselling, adding that, students must seek help from counsellors or people they can trust on the difficulties they go through.
He said because of his engagement in drugs abuse, he couldn’t impact the profession that he had studied and called on the students not to engage in any form of drug or substance abuse because “it would only destroy your life.”
Dr Samuel Agyei Wiafe, a Psychologist at the LEKMA Hospital on his part said children who took on adult responsibility had a risk factor to mental health.
He said it was at that young age, that children look for love and esteem, hence, do everything to attract it and advised students to be careful not to fall prey to bad counsellors who would only take advantage of their weakness at such point in life.
Mr Etornam Glende of the Mental Health Authority noted that, mental illness could affect anyone and said it was wrong to consider someone as a ‘mad person,’ insisting that such people were only suffering from one of the many types of mental illness.
Reverend Father Leonard Botchway, a school counsellor at the Armed Forces SHS, Burma Camp, said students should make use of the counsellors at their various schools rather than resorting to their friends for advice.
The programme was part of activities in a three-year Star Ghana project titled; “Promoting Quality Access to Mental Healthcare and Rights of Persons with Mental Disabilities in Traditional Mental Health Centre in Ghana.”
GNA
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