Suicide
Unfortunately, the spate of unusual suicides has not abated but rather on the rise. In the past few days the statistics has been changing at a worrying rate, suggesting that nothing effectively has been done to arrest the aberration.
Until we reverse the trend, our country is at risk of becoming contaminated with the appetite for suicides – an infectious social challenge which should be stopped by all means at our disposal as a civilized people.
A society where people easily turn to suicide as a vent for their depressions and other mental challenges is a sick one which should be treated and exorcised of the condition.
Not doing anything about it by those entrusted with managing this department of health and related agencies should not be tolerated under any circumstances.
Peace Agbemefo, a female police officer stationed in the Garu Tempane District of the Upper East Region, is the latest statistics, and painfully still counting. Just when we thought that things have stabilized fresh incidence of suicides are reported and regrettably, women appear to be catching up with their opposite sex in the weird development.
Gone are the days when women were regarded as better managers of stress; no longer so as the records show that many of them have ended their lives through suicides, unable to cope with the conditions they find themselves in.
Before the police woman’s story broke, a man had reportedly committed suicide in a church, making a bizarre spectacle and expectedly going virile on social media just a few days ago.
With no suicide note to explain what drove her into the spiritually inappropriate occurrence, people, especially social media activists, are left to make their own conjectures.
Peace, according to these persons, took the weird path because of a relationship challenge. She is said to have failed to contain the depression following what she suffered in the relationship and took suicide as an option. True or false – there definitely was a reason she could no longer live.
She was taken mentally ill and that is what many Ghanaians do not understand. Mental illness is like any other ailment requiring management by relevant experts. The constable was definitely showing signs of being worried but this did not attract the attention of anybody. Her superior officer, the District Commander, had he been observant, might have noticed something unusual about her and intervened.
We recall the Tema shooting incident by a Corporal who ended up killing himself following which a directive from the Police Administration directed Commanders to observe their subordinates with a view to taking appropriate actions to help those found to be suffering depression or any other mental condition.
We have had cause to discuss the suicide trend as have other Ghanaians who appreciate the import of the anomaly.
Our sociologists, clinical psychologists, teachers and other stakeholders must ponder over this challenge which needs addressing lest the appetite for it spreads further. With children not left out of the craze, are we not already at a point where it has spread like a cancer on a given organ?
It has continued and we have spoken; but is speaking about it without practical action all we can do as a people?
When we take it as a national conversation with individuals understanding the basics of psychology and to be able to tell when the danger signs are blinking and knowing what to do is an important first step towards arresting the spate of suicides which has bedeviled the country.