Textile Art as an Effective Vocation for Rehabilitating Discharged Mental Patients

Abstract

The study was an action research to assist discharged mental patients who were once inmates of the Kumasi rehabilitation centre, Cheshire Home Edwenase, to acquire skills in the textile art making before being discharged to their communities. This was as a result of their inability to make a living while integrated into the main life mainstream. They have been affected by stigmatization and so textile art was used as an intervention to address their problems. Using art creative design, five purposively selected mental patients at the centre were taken through the production of making tie and dye which also served as therapy for them. The main findings of the research which have been expounded by photographs of selected works of the discharged mental patients show that the environment, their state and their intensity of illness did not affect their creativity. Then the government can make a policy that all mentally challenged patients should be given a vocational training at the various psychiatric hospitals and units.  This will reduce the stress that they go through at their boring moments that make them end up in the psychiatric hospital again. It is envisaged that these patients will serve as a useful source of information for the psychiatric hospitals, rehabilitation centers and occupational therapist in the country and the general public at large.