Amnesty International has revealed that South Sudan has only two practising psychiatrists for the nation’s 11 million people, making it unable to cope with the high levels of mental trauma suffered by survivors of the country’s two-year civil war.
The rights group, in a report released on Wednesday, says mass killings, torture, abductions and forced cannibalism have led to an increase in cases of mental illness, with patients routinely housed in prisons due to an “almost total” absence of mental health care.
“My mind is not good,” the report quoted one man, Phillip, as saying as he described being forced to eat the flesh of dead men rounded up and shot in a security forces building in the capital, Juba, when conflict broke out in December 2013.
“They found me, tied my arms behind my back and forced me at gunpoint to drink blood and eat flesh … At night when I sleep, those who were killed come back in my nightmares.”
More than 10,000 people have been killed and two million others forced to flee their homes since fighting erupted.
The world’s youngest nation descended into war in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his then deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup against his government, accusations that Machar denies.
The two leaders signed a peace agreement in March to end the war, forming a transitional unity government that saw Machar take up the post of first vice president.
