CTN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL OUTREACH

Clothe The Naked Outreach reaches out to mentally-challenged people in Psychiatric Hospitals of Ghana with clothes to ensure that they always have something to wear to make their stay in hospitals a bit more comfortable, and also make them feel loved to aid their recovery process.

This project helps us to redistribute clothing resources to fulfill our mission of reducing the impact of solitude, and ensures the optimum use of clothing resources. It also helps to reduce environmental pollution by reducing the amount of clothes which may end up at the dumping sites and gutters.

Even though it is the responsibility of the government of Ghana to clothe, feed and ensure the general welfare of mentally-sick patients in Psychiatric Hospitals of Ghana, psychiatric hospitals in Ghana need a lot assistance from charitable organizations and individuals to survive. For instance, the last time that patients in psychiatric hospitals of Ghana received uniforms was about 10 years ago, leaving the responsibility of providing clothing for psychiatric patients in the hands of their families. Meanwhile it is difficult for psychiatric hospital authorities to even locate families of most patients under their care, so how should the patients be clothed?. Unfortunately, some families, due to socio-cultural reasons, abandon their relatives once they are put on admission, and they do not even come for them when they are discharged. Most families who do not want to be stigmatized by society give wrong addresses to the hospital, making it impossible for authorities to locate them even when their wards are fine. Now who to provide clothes for the patients within the hospitals, and clothes for them to wear home when they are discharged is a question which need to be answered. Let us not forget that there are so many people outside the hospital walls who have more clothes in their closets than they have ever needed.