Primitive, Crude Mentality

One of the stories in yesterday's edition was about the so-called crash-landing of a witch in Kumasi: the umpteenth time the weird and unsubstantiated occurrence has taken place in the country.

Various parts of the country have varying stories about so-called witches and we wonder why females always have to suffer such negative branding.

We hardly hear wizards crash-landing and want to think that perhaps they have mastered the art of flying better than their female counterparts.

In the Northern parts of the country, there is even a witch camp where the aged are being housed and protected from the locals. Such women would have been killed but for such protection.

The tendency of labeling destitute and senile old women witches is condemnable, especially when such persons who exhibit traits of psychiatric challenges make incredible and bizarre confessions such as being witches and were on an esoteric mission but had to crash-land as a result of superior forces overwhelming them.

There are some who inadvertently claim to be responsible for some deaths in their neighbourhoods, which are incredible confessions which are recipes for lynching.

This attitude of Ghanaians is inappropriate and crude. Some Ghanaians easily believe that naked women who ascribe negative things to themselves are witches who must be subjected to instant justice.

We cannot imagine such persons dying at the hands of primitive-thinking persons who live in the 21^st century. Anybody arrested for maltreating such persons should be made to face the full rigours of the law.

Almost all persons ostensibly crash-landing have mental challenges and would need immediate psychiatric attention at the appropriate mental health centre.

A few years ago, an inmate of the Pantang Psychiatric Hospital, was nearly lynched at Adenta after she was said to have crash-landed at a place in the area. But for the intervention of law enforcement agents that woman would have been lynched. It turned out that she used to live abroad but came home and contracted a mental disorder. She had obviously fled the health facility and when one of the persons claimed to have seen her ostensibly crash landed, she became a cynosure of the neighbourhood.

It is worrying that mental health is yet to be considered with the seriousness it deserves in Ghana. That accounts for people not commiserating with mentally challenged women.

The Mental Health Service has a lot to do in the area of educating the citizenry about how to appropriately respond to people with mental disorder.

We condemn totally the attack on women who, as a result of mental challenges, leave their homes sometimes naked.

Such persons need care and attention not haranguing and sometimes death at the hands of ignorant and primitive persons.