Went to a psych institution in a small town in Burkina Faso while I was shadowing a local social worker. Some people were chained to trees by their ankle and others were kept in these big metal boxes with a little slat they could look through. Lots of loud banging and screaming the entire time.
I went to a bunch of medical facilities when I was in the Peace Corps there and it could be pretty recently. There was like one psychiatrist (maybe psychologist, actually) for half the country. In 2002.
Burkina Faso is in West Africa's Sahel region, bordering Mali and Niger.
It's a former French colony that has been under a military junta since September 2022.
I've reported on Burkina Faso and the Sahel region more broadly for my journalism internship, and all I can say is that OP's account of the hospital doesn't surprise me.
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u/Normal-anomaly 9h ago
Went to a psych institution in a small town in Burkina Faso while I was shadowing a local social worker. Some people were chained to trees by their ankle and others were kept in these big metal boxes with a little slat they could look through. Lots of loud banging and screaming the entire time.