The media has been urged to focus on limitations that inhibit persons with disability from reaching their full potentials by helping in removing those limitations through their reportage and advocacy.
“The way we treat persons with disabilities and mental health conditions disempower them and needs a relook,” Dr Elizabeth Agbeto Zotorvie, Programme Manager, Ghana Blind Union has said.
“Such persons rather need our support and love, and not our pity and sympathy, she said.
She was speaking at a training workshop organised for some media personnel and civil society actors in Accra.
Hope for Future Generations (HFFG) and the PsykForum, both non-governmental organisations, organised the training as part of the “Ghana Somubi Dwumadie” (GSD), a project geared towards training critical stakeholders on disability to promote the use of positive non-discriminatory language in media programmes across four regions.
The GSD, a four-year programme, is being funded by the UK Government through UKAid.
The intervention is expected to reduce negative and discriminatory attitudes, behaviours and norms faced by people with disabilities in Ghana, including people with mental health conditions.
The purpose of the training was to seek to increase the use of positive disability language in media discourses on disability and mental health conditions, while promoting non-discriminatory language in all media programmes and publications, as well as citing positive examples of such persons living normal lives.
The two organisations, as a consortium, are implementing the Social Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) and stigma reduction for mental health and disability inclusion in 18 districts in four regions, namely, Greater Accra, Central, Savannah and North East under the project.
Maame Serwaa Gyamfi, Monitoring and Evaluation officer for the project at HFFG, said the focus was on the promotion of positive culture, language, and law enforcement regarding persons with disabilities and mental health.
“We also want explore how the law is backing the rights of people with disabilities.”
She mentioned the targeted population as including religious persons, education sector, civil society organisations, persons with disabilities and the media.
The implementation of the project stated in April 2021 aiming to reduce the negative and discriminatory attitudes towards people with disabilities and mental health.
Ms Gyamfi said advocates would be trained to carry out messages of positive culture for persons with disabilities.
Ms Nancy Ansah, Director of Programmes, HFFG, said there was the need for people in the communities to support the call of promoting the rights of persons with disabilities.
She encouraged persons with disabilities including those with mental health conditions to continue to insist on their rights and demand for all social amenities that would ease their movement and make their lives comfortable.
She said the media whose activities influence the culture of society should endeavour to promote the positives of the persons with disabilities and ensure that they were structured within the systems of the society.
Ms Ansah said under the project, all major stakeholders including community and religious leaders, the media, and other opinion leaders were being engaged and sensitised on avoiding discrimination and stigmatisation of persons with disabilities and mental health.
“We shouldn’t tag persons with disabilities and forming a culture of neglect towards them,” she said.
