Alvin Mantey
MD-MPH Candidate, MS4
University of Cincinnati College of Medicine

The Reality of Having Schizophrenia: A Medical Student’s Opinion

Imagine this. It’s a lovely Sunday morning in Pokuase, a community in rural Accra, Ghana. The air is filled with the smells and yells of street vendors as they sell delicious baked goods with an ungodly amount of sugar, and the sound of old engines rattling on. Children run across the unpaved streets as cars slowly navigate an army of water-soaked potholes from yesterday’s rain. The colors and aromas of neatly dressed church members and deacons fill your eyes – men in suits, kaftans and traditional wear, and women in long, flowy dresses with luxurious jewelry and headgear. It is just another Sunday. But amidst the natural chaos something sticks out. No, someone. She is dressed in tattered clothes and covered with earth. Her hair is brown and her skin dark from heavy sun exposure. Her face tells you all you need to know – lips chapped, feet bare, chest bony and her demeanor, determined? Apathetic? You cannot tell. Her eyes are sunken, and she carries on, step by step. Is she hungry, can she afford a meal? Where did she sleep, because it rained yesterday. Is she alone, where is her family? You ask these questions, but not to her. She makes eye contact with you, and mutters something under her breath, and you drive away. It is just another Sunday.

Demon-possessed “mad people.” That’s what we called them back home in West Africa. They were paying for sins they had committed or were victims of some shaman’s curse. And she is not alone. There are thousands like her across the country, all abandoned, all ostracized.

Growing up, this was normal for me, and like most people, I paid no attention, neither did I worry or bother. Everything changed with my migration to the United States with my family when I was 14 years old. I looked for mad people everywhere, but they were nowhere to be seen. I thought, perhaps the United States doesn’t have them like we do, or perhaps they are too good at hiding it. Or they found a way to help them. And I was right. Years later in medical school, I would uncover that the demons that plagued these people, were mental disorders, and the solution, antipsychotics. Now antipsychotics are not a cure, neither are they benign. But they return the soul to the body, the mind to the person, and the person to their family. They’re a game changer, and I’m not sure why I never heard of them being used back at home.

I recently took a trip back home, and surely enough, not much has changed. There were still many mad people walking around, and knowing what I know now, that there’s treatment for them, made things even harder to wrap my head around. I know one day things will change, and with better medications on the market now, rapidly too. I hope to share the good news I’ve found, to mad people and their families, and to help people understand that there is hope – that they are not lost. That they too can put on suits and kaftans and long flowy dresses and partake in the natural chaos of a Sunday morning.

Writer’s Comment:

My name is Alvin Mantey. I’m currently in my 4th year of a 5-year dual-degree medicine and master’s in public health program at the University of Cincinnati. My family moved from Ghana to the United States when I was 14 years old, and that’s where my journey in academia began. From pursuing show choir and soccer at the high school level, to majoring in biology with concentrations in biomedical studies in college, my journey through the US system has been exhilarating to say the least. But I’m not just an academic – my interests outside school lie in church activities, playing intramural soccer, and dancing on social media to over 1.6 million followers with my identical twin brother. When I’m not doing these things, I spend my time on Instagram educating people on all things mental health. This work is important to me as I find quite the gap between what I know in medicine and what people know about their own mental health. I do this work to help them live fuller lives in love, power and a sound mind. My journey in psychiatry began with a dream – a dream to live in a world where all people are able to live to their fullest potentials. The catalyst for this dream was my own lived experience in Accra, Ghana, where I lived before I moved with my family. The people I saw, and the lives missed stirred in me an unquenchable fire, that I now, somewhat ironically, seek to put out. This is a calling for me, and with residency coming up for me soon, I welcome what comes next. I hope to share with you another perspective: one which I hope captures my lived experience as well as the lived experiences of over 500,000 people with severe mental illness in Ghana.