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Dealing with suicidal tendencies
There have been a few suicide cases that have caused a lot of concern due to the ages of the persons involved. I recall the jumping to death of a female student of the University of Ghana, Legon.
Another case was the death of the daughter of a Member of Parliament of the current ruling New Patriotic Party. These are but a few of the suicide cases that have happened in our country and it is definitely a cause for concern.
This month, we will be celebrating the International Suicide Day which provides opportunity for government to highlight the issue of suicide and focus the attention of society on it.
Life is a much cherished thing and the survival instinct is very great and, therefore, for someone to deliberately decide to end his or her life is quite bizarre. It strongly suggests a certain degree of mental confusion which borders on insanity.
Someone said that “there is a certain degree of madness in every individual and the fact that a person goes and comes on a daily basis without any display of mental instability, does not mean that you are of a sound mind”.
It only needs something small to trigger the mental instability and the demonstration of the mental problem would start manifestation.
Causes of suicide vary from person to person. It is generally caused by stress that can be due to loss of say a loved one, rejection by family, lover etc. In the case of the young lady at KNUST who committed suicide, it was attributed to her being jilted by her lover and led to her decision to take her own life.
The lady who jumped to her death at Legon, it was also reported that she hinted that she sometimes felt like jumping from the top floor. All these point to the need for a psychiatric or counselling support centre that is easily accessible to students and society in general, so people who feel stressed can easily walk in to seek help.
There is also the need for an intensive educational effort by the Ministry of Health aimed at sensitising the populace about alertness towards potential suicidal people. In the case of the lady who committed suicide at Legon, may be a bit of awareness towards signs of suicidal tendencies by her colleagues might have saved her life.
People around us are those who can easily detect any changes in our normal behaviour and be the best people to detect if there is anything wrong with us.
However, if they are not trained to detect signs of danger in terms of mental disorders, they cannot help raise the alarm and before it is realised that something is amiss, it might be too late to save the situation.
COVID-19 has brought in its wake a lot of stress upon individuals both young and old and immediate steps must be taken by government to increase awareness of the potential for suicidal thoughts.
A couple of days ago, there was a reportage of a young boy in the Cape Coast Municipality who jumped to his death. The report had it that, the boy who was living with his father and step mother, had been receiving beatings on a frequent basis according to neighbours.
According to neighbours, on several occasions they had heard the boy crying at dawn due to beatings he had been subjected to by his father.
On the fateful day that he jumped to his death, he was apparently trying to escape from a similar beating from his father who had earlier gone to bring him to their room from outside and beaten him.
The neighbours claimed that it was after his father had left him briefly that he tried to escape by jumping from the storey building, resulting in his untimely death. If the neighbours had been a bit more proactive, they might have reported to the police about the abusive situation the child was going through and might have saved his life.
There is this social value that is gradually eroding but must be brought back. Those days that a neighbour would not hesitate to discipline you when you went wrong without waiting for your parents to return before informing them, is something worth considering.
The idea of being each other’s keeper seems to have vanished due to so-called human rights, modernisation and what have you. We are in an era where parents are bold enough to go to schools to attack teachers for caning their children and somehow get away with it. The times where people made it a point to interact cheerfully with their neighbours and were able to notice the changes in their mood, are long gone.
It has become an each one for himself situation and so there have been occasions where people have died and it has gone unnoticed till after a few days have gone by. That aspect of our social lives that served as a huge source of stress reliever, is gone and so a lot of people, especially women are stressed up.
The Ministry of Education has already initiated a programme of counselling for tertiary institutions but they must make it more proactive. The counsellors must interact with the students such that it would be easy for students to contact them and be ready to open up to them.
This is the only way that issues that are troubling these young adults, can be handled to relieve them of the pressures or stresses that push them into contemplating suicidal actions. The other group that has to be taken care of is the young people who are outside the educational system.
Special attention must be given them and government must develop a means for addressing their needs and also make “where to go for help” easily accessible.
The internet has also become an avenue for children to be abused and parents must pay attention to what their children do on the internet. Government must assist parents in this direction by making access to a hotline for parents available, so they can seek guidance should they find out that their children are being abused on the internet.
Again, should they want to block their children from certain sites, they must be given the assistance to do so. We are in a very complex and very challenging world and young people especially, are under a lot of pressure and everything possible must be done to protect them.
Parents now have a responsibility to pay more attention to their children and the government must do more to provide them with the necessary tools such as TV programmes that would educate them on how to detect signs of stress in their wards.
Civil society and the religious organisations must also be involved in this crusade to assist the parents so they in turn can assist the efforts by government, so that collectively, the protection of the youth from suicidal tendencies, would be achieved.
Laud Kissi-Mensah
THE typical itinerant salesman in Sikaman is a herbalist. He is normally a slim macho with the capacity to perambulate the expanse of area covering the triangle of Accra-Tema-Ashiaman. In short, he can walk a total of 60 miles a day, marketing a product that cures every disease, including poverty. 
The door-to-door herbal pharmacist advertises his product by word of mouth. He has nothing to do with the Food and Drugs Board (FDB). After all, his concoctions do not feature on FM stations.
Those herbalists who cannot walk to propagate the herbal gospel, liaise with drivers of mass transportation and their mates. They are, therefore, given the chance to sell their products on Benz buses that ply the routes.
Normally, the herbalist starts his sales message with a prayer and Bible study. He asks the passengers to bow down their heads in supplication to God the father, the son, the Holy Spirit.
When a herbalist asks the passengers to close their eyes and bow their heads, Moslems on board naturally feel offended. They feel that the herbalist has no right to assume that every passenger is a Christian. They think such an assumption is an affront to Islam.
So a Moslem on board will raise the hand for a point of order. He’ll remind the herbalist that it would be in his own interest to mind his language.
“Be careful the way you address people in a public place. Not every person here is a Christian,” he’d state assertively.
Of course, the herbalist will promptly ignore him, but would all the same “watch” his tongue. Who knows whether or not the Moslem brother is inspired by Quoranic zeal to defend the tenets of Islam to the hilt?
When he starts saying, “Wallahi!” and “Inshallah!” it could be the beginning of proclaiming Islam as supreme, a point which must be driven home with talibanic precision.
So the herbalist must tread carefully lest he steps on fire.
The herbalist could even add a measure of mirth to it all, by announcing that Christians on board today have very interesting company on the journey, but that should not detract from the business of the day.
The Moslem brother will weigh the words carefully and offer a wry smile.
He must be careful the occasion does not degenerate into the use of semantics and proverbial oration to deride his conviction that public utterances must be mindful of religious sensibilities. He has made his point very clear and expects that it is taken in good faith in the interest of a peaceful journey.
The herbalist will now open the New Testament and preach salvation, stating clearly that salvation can come only through Jesus Christ and NOBODY else.
The Moslem brother will now start twitching his moustache. The visible and almost revolutionary reflexes of his upper lip can be an indication that sentiments have begun superseding reason, and the outcome could well be tragic now shift uneasily in his seat.
The time has come for him to also express his right to the religion of his fore-bears. He’ll put his hand into his pocket and rise to his feet. The time has indeed come!
This article was first published on Saturday, September 9, 2006
When the cause of a particular problem like sickness, disease, sudden illness, a social issue etc. are not known, it stands to reason that resolving it becomes a huge challenge.
Citizens would understand the government when public announcements are made to the effect that government is trying to find a solution to the issue, even though it is taking a while for it to be resolved because citizens are rational beings.
On the other hand, if the solution to a particular issue is known to everybody but the government for whatever reason, is dragging its feet in resolving it, citizens become frustrated and begin to lose trust in their leaders.
One such issue is the heavy traffic along a section of the Kasoa – Odokor road. A short stretch of bad road between the traffic light at the Weija Government Hospital and the entrance to the entrance of the overhead that leads to the N1, is the cause of the problem but nothing is being done about it, day after day, week after week, month after month. Thus is clearly unacceptable.
Another issue that requires urgent attention is the lack of pavements along a lot of streets in parts of the various Municipal Assemblies. Exercise is a prerequisite for long life and healthy living and for those of us who it has become a way of life, this issue of people putting up structures right to the edge of the drains beside the roads, are making life difficult for us.
We are compelled to walk along the roads, putting our lives at serious risk. Pedestrians should never be compelled to compete with vehicles on our streets and roads. Roads and streets are made for vehicles and pavements are made for pedestrians. That is the norm. Any attempt to normalise a situation where pedestrians are mingling with vehicles is insanity.
It is the road regulations that makes it so and therefore district or municipal assemblies are to take responsibility and ensure that spaces for pavements are not encroached upon. Citizens have rights that must be protected by their leaders and making pavements available to pedestrians, is one of them.
When we hear of teachers having sex with students, it appears it is something recent. It is not a new phenomenon. It has been there since Adam. Perhaps this issue is getting much attention due to the proliferation of social media. It was an open secret in times past when Teachers were in relationships with female students and some married them immediately after completion of school.
Some teachers were also known to be having unholy interactions with female pupils but due to the times that these acts occurred, human rights issues and the awareness around it, allowed such unscrupulous teachers to get away with their crimes.
Now we are in a different era and so a Headmaster is now in hot waters. He is alleged to have raped about 19 female students and as usual, some officials tried to cover it up and are also in hot waters and their actions or inactions in the matter are under investigation.
Why the man has been allowed to roam freely without being arrested is simply mind boggling. It appears that the law applies differently, depending on who you are. This issue came to public attention sometime in August this year, yet the police had not arrested or invited this man for question regarding the rape allegation.
It has come out that he is a Constituency Secretary of the ruling party and the question in the public domain is that, is it because he is a political figure that is why he is still walking around without questioning? I believe in the rule of law so let us hold our breadth and let the proper thing be done.
The police must however be seen to be active in this matter. God bless.
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