In Ivory Coast as in other developing contexts, more than 75% of the persons affected by mental disorders do not receive any kind of care nor have access to pharmaceutical treatment.
According to the WHO, national budgets for mental health are less than 2% of the entire health budget. The lack of public resources, the absence of social awareness and strong stigmas associated to mental problems oblige thousands of individuals to live at the margins of their societies, completely cast out and isolated, abandoned in the streets or chained and hided in the villages.
Segregation and social exclusion prevent these people from accessing basic human rights protection thus making their rehabilitation and reintegration process in the society even more difficult.