GREGOIRE RECEIVES AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION CHESTER M. PIERCE HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD AND SPEAKS TO THE CONVENTION IN NEW ORLEANS.
“We have to change the way we look at people who are fragile—because this is about humanity,” said Grégoire Ahongbonon, the founder of the Association Saint-Camille-de-Lellis (ASC), a comprehensive mental health care system in West Africa approved by the World Health Organization (WHO). Ahongbonon delivered the inaugural Chester M. Pierce Human Rights Award Lecture yesterday, titled “Person-Oriented Psychiatry: Changing the Way People With Mental Illness Are Viewed and Treated in West Africa and Around the World.”
Ahongbonon, who was born in Benin, developed depression in his 20s after experiencing a bankruptcy. He recovered and decided to dedicate his life to those in distress. In 1983, he founded ASC, where he worked with poor patients with leprosy or AIDS, prisoners, and homeless children. In 1990, upon discovering the plight of African psychiatric patients, whose human rights were blatantly violated, ASC began to house them and treat them with dignity.
