Pinaman Appau has been appointed as the new chief executive officer of the Mental Health Authority.
She replaces Professor Akwasi Osei.
Before her appointment, Appau was the hospital director for the Accra Psychiatric Hospital.
She is a consultant psychiatrist and mental health rights advocate.
The Mental Health Authority (MHA) is an agency established by an act of Parliament – the Mental Health Act 2012 (Act 846) – to propose, promote and implement mental health policy.
It also aims to provide culturally appropriate, humane and integrated mental health care throughout Ghana.
Profile
Pinaman Appau is Ghana’s first female psychiatrist trained by the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons. Over the past 15 years, she has worked to improve mental health care in Ghana in many regions of the country.
Appau has worked in mental health care with some of the most vulnerable individuals. It has become her career and life ambition to see to improved service delivery in her field by ensuring that proper administrative structures in the mental health-care system are well instituted and in good functioning order.
The quest to fulfil this ambition drove her to undertake a Master’s degree in public administration at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), where she emerged as the overall best student and valedictorian for the graduate course for the year 2020.
Apart from her administrative role as director of the nation’s biggest mental health facility, she is also actively involved in training doctors and psychiatrists with both the Ghana and the West African Colleges of Physicians, as well as medical students from the University of Ghana and other medical schools.
Outside her official duties, Appau for many years has championed the rights and welfare of individuals living with mental illness, especially children and the youth.
Reporting by Fred Dzakpata in Accra
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