For many in South Sudan, mental illness is a disease attributed to witchcraft, with the mentally ill often ostracised and regarded as wild and a danger to society.

As a result, communities often view mentally challenged people as misfits with families neglecting them and sometimes even abandoning them.



Feeling unwanted, the mentally challenged people are forced onto the streets, where they loiter, at times totally naked, scavenging food to survive. In rural and remote areas, people suffering from mental health problems are often pushed towards the edges of settlements, until they end up living in the bushes and forests.

While thinking they have found refuge in the streets, they are, however, rounded up and thrown in jails, where they are said to be in safer accommodation. 

But while jail remains one of the so-called secure places for the mentally challenged, a South Sudan prisoners' rights organisation says inmates at Juba central prison live in appalling conditions in cells not fit to harbour human beings.

"The mentally ill inmates in Juba central prison are treated like wild animals. Their cells are very dirty and they are poorly fed," Martin Goleg, a prisoners' rights advocate said.

The mentally ill inmates in Juba central prison are treated like wild animals

Deputy Director of Juba central prison, Felix Kayidiri agrees with Goleg.

"There is need to improve on the conditions under which they are living. They need urgent medication and improved sanitary facilities," he said. 

About 13 of the more than 60 mentally challenged inmates have been locked in prison for over 20 years. Most have seen their conditions grow worse over the years.

But a prisons officer, Nicholas Tuuke argues that "mentally ill people are violent and therefore, a problem to society" a reason for which "we keep them in prison where they can be easily controlled".



While Tuuke believes that "drug abuse and stress caused by unemployment especially among youths" are the major causes of mental illness, a view held by his colleagues, prison warders in South Sudan have little or no knowledge of psychiatry and depend on health professionals for the little information they get.

Mental health professionals in the country claim that although there was a high level of post traumatic stress disorder after years of civil war, South Sudan lacks mental health legislation.

Meanwhile, psychotropic drugs are not common even in the country's specialised hospital in the capital, Juba teaching Hospital, where patients are expected to fend for their own food needs.

Nonetheless, Tuuke asserts that "while in prison the inmates are treated and some of them get healed and are set free".

The harsh conditions that the mentally challenged face in the newly independent state are not only confined to prisons and bushes. South Sudan's animist and Christian cultures also play a role in the area of mental health, a role that many professionals have condemned as either being insufficient or sheer profiteering.

In line with traditional practices, relatives bypass conventional medical experts to seek treatment for their sick ones from traditional doctors, where some conditions simply deteriorate.

"At times it is severe malaria or other ailments that lead to people becoming mentally disturbed but their relatives think it is witchcraft and do not bring them to hospitals for treatment," Doctor Ambrose Lagu of Juba Clinic said.



But in spite of mainstream churches, such as Catholics and Protestants referring such cases to their hospitals or government hospitals for treatment, some smaller community churches more often than not claim that what the mentally challenged need are prayers to get cured.



Hellen Acallo, a social worker warns that "Some fake pastors get money from worried relatives, claiming that they can pray for them to get better. In most cases they do not get better and they are abandoned".

And according to Kayidiri, those abandoned are "jailed for their own or for public safety".