There have been studies to show that Traditional & faith Based Healers play very important roles in addressing mental health care needs in Ghana by offering what is religiously or culturally acceptable to the mentally ill. The MHA, has therefore seen the need to collaborate with such practitioners who in most cases are the first point of call to the mentally ill at the onset of a crisis.

In traditional African belief systems, mental health problems are perceived as due to ancestors or by bewitchment and traditional healers and religious advisors are viewed as having expertise in these areas. Furthermore, these sources of care are often more accessible than the orthodox forms of mental health care.

The collaboration therefore involves the training of traditional and faith based healers to first have a fair understanding of cases patients present, act on those that require no medication, but have the capacity to improve with some show of care and refer those they are unable to handle to medical practitioners who will be attached to such places.

The practice of traditional healing has tremendously evolved with time in Ghana, especially in this era of globalisation and what some have generally termed the associated “enlightenment” that comes with it.

The traditional practice of traditional healing which was dominated by fetish priests and priestesses has now been seen as a backward and outmoded form of practice. The practice was so dominated by the fetish practitioners that ordinary herb collectors had to associate themselves with these fetishes to receive the kind of patronage they would want to see. With the advent of modernity and the huge wave of Christianity, Islamism, and other forms of religions, traditional forms of worship have taken a backstage.

Patrons of traditional religion have now fused their practice with one form of these modern religions or the other. Today, most faith based healers exhibit the spirituality which is the ability to divine within the supernatural context to find the cause of illness and misfortune, as well as the collection of herbs to produce herbal medicines.