Cameroon’s pioneer Mental Health Days began holding in Yaounde on December 15, 2015, with stakeholders crying out against the neglect of their profession. Speaking at the start of the three-day event holding at Merina Hotel in the capital city’s Central Business District, Alim Hayatou, the Secretary of State in charge of Epidemics and Pandemics in the Ministry of Public Health, promised to restructure and give the profession more fillip. He admitted that mental health practice has for long “been an orphan of the health care system.” He added that a situation whereby Cameroon’s two largest cities – Yaounde and Douala – have only three or four mental health doctors each was unacceptable.

Alim Hayatou blamed society for often associating mental health with mental illness, saying this was not true. He attributed the growing number of patients with mental challenges to the tendency by families to quickly abandon their relatives after failing to offer them care.  Earlier, Dr Félicien Ntone, a psychiatrist, Sub-Director of Mental Health in the Ministry of Public Health and Deputy General Manager of the Yaounde University Teaching Hospital, presented a lamentable picture of mental health practice in Cameroon. He appealed to all departments in the Ministry of Public Health to henceforth include mental health components in their activities. According to him, the absence of a proper mental health policy cannot guarantee an effective health care system.

Dr Félicien Ntone decried the neglect of the mental health profession over the years in terms of training, organisation, funding and integration into the public health system, reminding the audience that Cameroon was now at war. The resultant violence (suicide bombings) and prolonged economic crisis only worsen an already bad situation as the response has been weak, he said. “Without good mental health, Cameroon can’t develop nor hope to become an emergent nation by 2035,” Dr Ntone warned. He vowed to continue his advocacy until mental health is given its rightful place in Cameroon’s health care system. With the theme, “The Problem Of Mental Health In Cameroon: Situation And Prospects,” the opening of three days of discussions was also attended by children with mental challenges. At the end, participants are expected to chart the way for mental health practice in Cameroon.