But although the hospital has bigger and better facilities than the public hospital, it has to deliver patients who do not respond to counseling and sedation there.

But at a 12-bed ward in the corner of Juba Teaching Hospital, psychologist George Wani, says he has no choice but to keep patients sedated for want of psychiatric drugs.

He has to use what little tranquilizers are available to calm patients down and that, if that doesn’t work, he has to send patients to Juba’s prison.

“The sanitarium of Juba is inside the prison. We are not intending to admit the mentally sick in the prison, but we are obliged and we have no alternative. As in an open space, the patient would be very destructive and harmful to others, very violent, aggressive and people outside cannot even right [correct] the situation,” Wani said.

South Sudan Deputy Minister of Health Yatta Lori Lugor says that the country has so many competing needs that the means to help the traumatized are just not there.

“Many of our people don’t know about these mental disorders, except when things come bizarre, like for example they see someone walking naked and then they conclude that this person is mentally sick. But otherwise they cannot diagnose early cases of mental disorder,” Lugor said.

But until the hospital gets proper psychiatric drugs, staff and facilities, South Sudan’s mentally ill will remain sedated or shackled.