Everyone who goes to hospital always looks forward to being treated, and getting out of the facility as soon as possible.
But as fate would have it, some patients are admitted and forced to stay in hospital longer that they expected in the first place.
It becomes more painful when circumstances force one to be in a health facility for over 20 years, after being abandoned by his/her family.
This is exactly what one Sylvester Onyango is going through at Kisumu County Hospital, formerly Kisumu District hospital.Onyango, then 25 years-old has been admitted at the hospital’s psychiatric ward for 23 years and counting.
“He tells medics that before he came to hospital, he was helping his brother sell charcoal and cooking pans at the market centre,” Eunice Gor, a social worker at the hospital told the Standard.
According to Maurice Odhiambo, a nurse at the hospital cases of families abandoning their relatives soon they are diagnosed with mental illness are common.
“The stigma is too much. Families prefer bringing them to the hospital and leaving them here,” Odhiambo is quoted by Standard.
Abnormal functioning of nerve cell circuits, genetics/heredity, infections, brain defects or injury, prenatal damage and substance abuse are some of the most known causes of mental illness around the world.