Google Maps maintains the location of the E.S. Grant Mental Hospital in the Central Monrovia district on Benson Street. Everyone in Liberia knows Benson Street. Ask anyone on Benson Street where the E.S.Grant Mental Hospital is located and you will likely have one, or more, locals point you in a direction, but it’s not there. While affiliated with the extensive JFK Memorial Hospital, it is not located there either. Paynesville, ten miles from Central Monrovia, I found the Hospital located on the late E.S. Grant’s estate. Dr. Grant worked as a psychiatrist with patients at the facility and his family donated the property to the JFK Memorial Hospital to be used as an inpatient psychiatric hospital after the building in Central Monrovia was destroyed during the Liberian Civil War.
In a country of 5.5 million people E.S. Grant’s 50 bed capacity is the only mental health hospital in Liberia. When I arrived they had not one soccer ball for the patients to play; now there are two and much more thanks to donors.
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