Is personhood lost after mental illness? Exploring the dynamic interface between personhood and mental illness in Ghana.

Understanding of local conceptions of personhood and mental illness is central for developing therapeutic alliance and treatment regimens for persons living with mental illness. Such persons are exposed to several discriminatory behaviours yet factors that seem to encourage these behaviours are still not entirely understood. Personhood as construed from an emic perspective could potentially guide an understanding of societal attitudes toward individuals suffering from mental illness.

Combining mHealth Technology and Pharmacotherapy to Improve Mental Health Outcomes and Reduce Human Rights Abuses in West Africa: Intervention Field Trial.

Background: In West Africa, healers greatly outnumber trained mental health professionals. People with serious mental illness (SMI) are often seen by healers in "prayer camps" where they may also experience human rights abuses. We developed "M&M," an 8-week-long dual-pronged intervention involving (1) a smartphone-delivered toolkit designed to expose healers to brief psychosocial interventions and encourage them to preserve human rights (M-Healer app), and (2) a visiting nurse who provides medications to their patients (Mobile Nurse).