Who we are

Mental Health and Well-Being for All

PASSION FOR TOTAL CARE (PTC) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation, providing healthcare to people with mental illnesses, psychosocial and seizure disorders.

The establishment of PTC became relevant, following a research conducted by two final year students, Richard E. Avadetsi and Donald Anuga [2012] of the University for Development Studies, School of Medicine and Allied Health, Tamale Campus; on the topic, “Factors that Influence the Choice of Place for Treatment of Mentally Ill Patients in the Tempane District of the Upper East Region of Ghana”.

Factors uncovered among others include:

  • Distance from mental health hospitals; that is, about one thousand kilometres (1000 km) from Northern Ghana to Southern Ghana, where all the three mental health hospitals are located.
  • Poor management of mental health conditions by non-professionals, traditional and faith-base healers (by beating, chaining and starving).
  • Misconception about treatment of mental health patients in modern medical practice: that is to say, “mentally ill patients treated in the hospital turn to become fools”.
  • Poverty and stigmatization

As much as some patients and their relatives go through unbearable treatment from the traditional and faith-base healers, they believe that their situation would be better in the hospital or a health centre. Nevertheless, they complained there was no special psychiatry health facility in the whole of the Upper East Region, for which reason, they had no choice than to continue seeking treatment in the traditional homes and churches.

Though, over the years, efforts have been made to improve on the care for mentally ill persons according to modern medical practice in Africa and particularly, Ghana, there is still a wide gap between existing care facilities and internationally accepted standards which needs to be narrowed. The woefully inadequate mental healthcare units in the Bawku municipality, Pusiga, Binduri, Garu and Tempane Districts, manifests in the lack of proper infrastructure, shortage of medicine and apathetic attitude towards mental health services in the country.

On this background, PASSION FOR TOTAL CARE (PTC) was established in May 2015 by a group of mental health workers, social workers, teachers and religious leaders, to compliment government’s efforts in the mental health sector in Ghana.