- Muna Mohamed Ahmed, 18 years old talks incessantly after her recent arrival patient at the Habeeb Public Mental Health Hospital. She has been diagnosed with mania. A week before being admitted she started suffering from insomnia, continuous and incomprehensible speech and started singing and dancing at inappropriate times. She also began to use abusive language and began fighting with those around her. It is claimed her symptoms have been brought on by the recent death of her father who had previously suffered a stroke a few months back. Muna experiences visual hallucinations of her father. Her immediate family believed she was possessed by evils spirits and had attempted to treat her by performing an exorcism during which she drank a recently sacrificed sheep’s blood. Upon arrival, Muna was treated with lithium carbonate and carbamazepine, an anti-psychotic drug provided for by WHO (World Health Organisation). Mogadishu, Somalia. 2011
- Male in-patients at the Habeeb Public Mental Health Clinic in Mogadishu, Somalia. He was found near the current frontline of fighting between Al-Shabaab and the AMISOM forces at Daynille. He had not eaten for a few weeks and was diagnosed with suffering from manic-depression. Mogadishu, Somalia. 2011
- A lady cleaning the floor where in-patients sleep at one of the rehabilitation centres run by the Habeeb Public Mental Health Clinics in Mogadishu, Somalia. 2011
- Male in-patients at the Habeeb Public Mental Health Clinic in Mogadishu, Somalia. 2011
- An in-patient standing by his bed at one of the rehabilitation centres run by the Habeeb Public Mental Health Clinics. The Habeeb Public Mental Health Hospital was first opened in November 2005 and began in a single room. It is now a network of 8 clinics and rehabilitation centres throughout South and Central Somalia, 5 of those based in Mogadishu. Since opening, its founder, ‘Dr’ Abdi Rahmann Ali Alwa Habeeb (actually trained as a psychiatric nurse), reckons the clinics have treated over 13,700 patients. This though is only a small drop in an unbelievably large ocean with what appears by all accounts to be a vast and uncontrolled problem in Somalia. The country has one of the highest rates of mental health disorders in the world. According to WHO estimates at least one third of the entire Somali population of eight million are afflicted by some form of mental illness. And even these figures could be an underestimate of the problem. As Dr Habeeb states ‘ Nobody who lives in Somalia today has good physical, mental and spiritual health.’ Mogadishu, Somalia. 2011
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