GEORGINA PIPSON’S POSTHUMOUS CALL FOR A NEW MENTAL HEALTH LEGISLATION

Abstract

Georgina Pipson was a young woman in a suburb Ghana who in January this year killed her five children and committed suicide thereafter. The media immediately jumped to blast her as an insensitive killer-mother. It later emerged that Georgina was mentally ill. She had post partum depression. The circumstances of her death are a wake-up call to us for the need to overhaul our mental health services in Ghana through the passage of the draft mental health bill. Georgina’s case is evidence of inadequate mental health care in the country, lack of adequate and full complement of personnel, lack of modern mental health bill rooted in human rights, stigma among the populace towards mental illness, breakdown of family support and lack of state machinery for the support of the mentally ill.