Human Rights Award Winner Transformed Mental Health Care in West Africa

Grégoire Ahongbonon, the founder of a comprehensive care system serving individuals with mental illness in West Africa, will deliver the inaugural Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award Lecture at this year’s Annual Meeting.

The session is titled “Person-Oriented Psychiatry: Changing the Way People With Mental Illness Are Viewed and Treated in West Africa and Around the World.”

Ahongbonon, who was born in Benin, developed depression in his 20s after experiencing a bankruptcy. He recovered and decided to dedicate his life to all those in distress. In 1983, he founded Association Saint-Camille-de-Lellis (ASC), where he worked with poor patients with leprosy or AIDS, prisoners, and homeless children. In 1990, upon discovering the plight of African psychiatric patients, whose human rights were blatantly violated, ASC began to house them and treat them with dignity.

Ahongbonon enlisted the help of a psychiatrist in Bouake, Ivory Coast, where he had lived since 1971, and ASC began establishing its own mental health care facilities. Since then, Ahongbonon and ASC have created a comprehensive mental health care system that offers affordable and adapted neuropsychiatric inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitation care to individuals in Ivory Coast, Benin, and Togo. Nearly 130,000 patients have now benefited from ASC’s services. The system has been approved by the World Health Organization.

Ten 200-bed inpatient centers have been established across the three countries, headed by registered nurses and staffed mostly by remitted patients who receive training from visiting and local psychiatrists. Nearly 50 Saint-Camille outpatient clinics provide follow-up care and medication and treat new patients from the surrounding villages.

Ahongbonon’s work has been recognized by numerous organizations. This year he was awarded the World Health Organization’s Geneva Prize for Human Rights and was named an Aurora Humanitarian by the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative. In 2020 he received the Dr. Guislain Breaking the Chains of Stigma Award, a joint initiative of the Brothers of Charity and Janssen Research & Development.

“Grégoire Ahongbonon is a truly remarkable individual and just the kind of leader that the Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award was designed to honor,” said APA President Vivian B. Pender, M.D. “Guided by his own fierce humanity and his personal experience with mental illness, he has made compassionate care for individuals with mental illness a reality throughout West Africa. I urge people to attend the session and hear this exemplary leader.”

The Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award recognizes the extraordinary efforts of individuals and organizations to promote the human rights of populations with mental health needs by bringing attention to their work.

Originally established in 1990 as the APA Human Rights Award, it was renamed in 2017 to honor Chester M. Pierce, M.D., an innovative researcher; an advocate against mental health disparities, stigma, and discrimination; and a visionary in global mental health. In 2021, the award was endowed by the APA Foundation’s Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Endowment Campaign (Psychiatric News). ■