The root causes: It is never just one reason

My years of counselling at CPAC show me abandonment is rarely an act of malice. It is the tragic endpoint of seven overwhelming distresses:

1. Severe maternal mental illness —The hidden emergency

a) Clinical Postpartum Depression (PPD): This is far beyond “baby blues.” It is a severe mood disorder that can appear weeks to months after birth. Due to a massive drop in hormones, extreme sleep deprivation, and emotional exhaustion, the mother feels deep sadness, worthlessness, and complete emotional numbness towards her baby. Picture: A new mother sits by her bed all day, staring blankly. Her baby cries for hours, but she cannot lift her hands to carry the baby. She whispers, “This baby would be better off without me.” She does not hate the baby; she feels she has completely failed as a mother.

b) Peripartum Psychosis (Postpartum Psychosis): This is a psychiatric emergency. Rare but extremely dangerous, appearing suddenly within the first 2-3 weeks after delivery. The mother completely loses touch with reality. She hears commanding voices telling her to abandon the baby, or believes the baby is possessed by an evil spirit or is a “spirit child” who will bring a curse. Picture: A mother genuinely believes she heard a voice saying, “Leave this child at the crossroads at midnight or your family will die.” She abandons the baby not out of hatred, but because her broken mind believes she is obeying a higher spiritual order to save her family.

c) Pre-existing untreated Schizophrenia: This is a chronic, severe mental disorder that existed before the pregnancy. The stress of pregnancy and labour shatters her fragile coping. She suffers from paranoid delusions — believing people want to poison her and the baby — flat affect (zero facial expression), and grossly disorganised thinking, making it impossible to plan how to feed or clean a baby. Picture: A young woman whose family called her illness “spiritual attack” instead of taking her for medication wanders away after delivery, completely forgetting she even gave birth, leaving the infant behind.

2. Extreme socio-economic deprivation: For many girls in some parts of Ghana such as Kasoa, Madina, or Bekwai, poverty is not a statistic; it is a daily panic. No money for antenatal care, no money for hospital delivery, no money for baby diapers or formula. When a mother cannot feed herself, the thought of feeding another mouth feels impossible. Some mothers say, “I left her where someone richer would find her, because I could not watch her starve to death in my hands.” It is a distorted act of survival.

3. Intense societal stigma and shame: In Ghana, pregnancy outside marriage, teenage pregnancy, or pregnancy from rape can bring extreme family rejection. The girl is called “spoilt,” beaten, banned from church, or sacked from school. The fear of bringing shame to the family name is heavier than the fear of police. So she hides the pregnancy for 9 months, delivers alone, and abandons in secret to protect her family’s “honour.”

4. Paternal abandonment — The Man Who Ran Away: Behind almost every abandoned baby is a man who vanished. He says, “It is not mine,” or “Abort it,” and switches off his phone. The mother is left utterly isolated — no emotional, financial, or social support. She is criminalised alone, but the abandonment started with him. Psychological research shows paternal denial is one of the strongest predictors of maternal panic and newborn abandonment. 

5. Substance abuse disorders: Alcohol, tramadol, and other drug addiction impair the brain’s executive functioning — the ability to plan, judge consequences, and process emotions. A mother struggling with addiction may give birth in a highly intoxicated or withdrawal state, unable to comprehend the needs of the newborn, leading to neglect and eventual abandonment.

6. The spirit child cultural phenomenon and superstition: In some remote pockets of Northern Ghana and even in few parts of Central and Ashanti regions, public health research shows babies born with congenital deformities, severe disabilities, or whose mothers die in childbirth are branded as “spirit children” or cursed. In extreme instances, families, under cultural pressure, mandate that such babies be exposed or abandoned at shrines or bushes. This is not mental illness, but a harmful cultural belief system that still kills.

The invisible wounds

On the baby: Risk of death from hypothermia, sepsis, and infection. Survivors suffer Anaclitic Depression and Failure to Thrive due to lack of touch. As adults, they battle Reactive Attachment Disorder, chronic mistrust, and identity crisis — “Why did my mother leave me in a dustbin?”

On the mother: Lifelong hidden grief, intense guilt, chronic PTSD, depression, and elevated suicide risk. A prison cell does not heal this.

On the nation: Overburdened orphanages like Osu Children’s Home, draining health budgets, and overworked Social Welfare officers.

SKIP THE QUEUE, TAP THE NEWS

You can now read the Ghanaian Times and The Spectator newspapers from the comfort of your device via TimesNewsPlus.

Join our WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27

Most people do not consider the effect that their statements could have on others, given their pedigree in society. 

The crazy rush for fame is really influencing a lot of people to do everything and anything to attract followers on social media platforms.  

Some Christian leaders have destroyed the faith of some young Christians by their words and actions.

 A Pastor who is popular on social media, made a statement to the effect that, Pastors pray for people to get jobs but there are no jobs for them to go for.  The question that readily comes to mind is that, why pray for something you do not believe is achievable, that is something that God is not going to answer? 

When a Pastor makes such a statement, it shakes the foundation of a lot of young believers especially, in churches where the Pastor has made the members to believe that he is more or less their Jesus. 

Members begin to lose trust in Men of God when such statements are made, and eventually in Christianity.

When someone calls you and dispatches you to execute a mission, you go out there to execute his expressed instructions.  You do not go out there to do things to please yourself but to do things that are in line with the instruction received so as to please the one who sent you. 

Any Pastor who claims he is called by God into the Pastoral ministry, always seeks to act in a manner that seeks to please the Lord.  He or she does not draw attention to himself or herself but goes about things in a manner that projects Jesus.  Those who are really called are never in a rush to engage in self promotion antics but are always focused to preach Christ and him crucified to save mankind. 

They do not make controversial comments that shifts attention from Jesus unto themselves. The called ones, are careful in their delivery of sermons with the intention of glorifying God. 

In the case of the Pastor I earlier talked about, what he said he does, is a deliberate deception because if you know there are no jobs and yet praying for people to get non-existent jobs, then that is deception.  

He is consciously or unconsciously portraying men of God as charlatans. This contradicts the numerous testimonies that abound of people getting job opportunities after being prayed for. 

What prayer does is to activate God’s favour for somebody to remember you, just simply offer you a job opportunity or for your eyes to open to an existing opportunity.  I am a living testimony of what prayer can do as far as jobs are concerned.

To preach that Pastors praying for people to get jobs is an error, shows that, that Pastor is just ignorant or is not called by God but has called himself into the Pastoral Ministry because those God calls, he equips to teach correctly. 

In Genesis Chapter 21, we see a maidservant Hagar, who had been sacked from her master’s house together with her child and was wandering in the desert and desperately needed water for her child. 

The Bible says that God opened her eyes and she saw water and she used it to refresh her son.  The water had been there all the time but it took prayer, for God to open her eyes to see opportunity of water and that is exactly what prayer does for the believer.  Prayer provides ideas that a child of God can implement to create a business to get wealth.  It is not everybody that should go look for a job from someone. 

Some people are supposed to be job creators to employ other people.  It is through prayer, that the revelation would come for what is to be done and therefore for a man of God to make such a statement, demeaning prayer, smacks of self-calling and not divine calling. God bless.

By Lord Kiss-Mensah