Pinaman Appau has been appointed as the new chief executive officer of the Mental Health Authority.
Prior to her appointment, Appau was the hospital director for the Accra Psychiatric hospital.
She is a consultant psychiatrist and a mental health rights advocate.
The Mental Health Authority (MHA) is an agency established by an Act of Parliament, Mental Health Act 846 of 2012, to propose, promote and implement mental health policies and provide culturally appropriate, humane and integrated mental health care throughout Ghana.
Pinaman Appau is Ghana’s first female Psychiatrist trained by the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons and has over the past fifteen years, worked to improve mental health in Ghana in several regions of the country.
Having worked within the mental health space with some of the nation’s most vulnerable persons, it has become her career and life ambition to see to improved service delivery in her field by ensuring that proper administrative structures in mental health care system are well instituted and functioning.
The quest to fulfil this ambition drove her to undertake a master’s degree program in Public Administration at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) where she came out as the Overall Best Student and Valedictorian, Graduate Programme, for the year 2020.
Apart from her administrative role as Director of the nation’s biggest mental health facility, she is also actively involved in the training of Doctors and Psychiatrists from both the Ghana and West African Colleges of Physicians, medical students from the University of Ghana Medical School and other medical schools.
Outside her official duties, Appau has for many years championed the rights and welfare of persons living with mental illness, especially children and the youth.
