By Isaac Arkoh
Cape Coast, May 26, GNA – The Assin Fosu Municipal Mental Health Officer, Ms Theodora Minta has raised serious concerns over a disturbing rise in mental health cases, particularly involving attempted suicides and suicides among women and teenage girls.
Of particular concern is the growing trend of young girls aged 14 and above using attempted suicide as desperate means to pressure parents into accepting their romantic relationships with boy-lovers.
Ms Minta told the Ghana News Agency that the girls have shifted from traditional suicide methods like hanging or cutting, to poisons ranging from mild substances to highly toxic agrochemicals, parazones and insecticides.
She said many victims engaged in secret intimate relationships unknown to their parents, but when their parents get to know and intervene with warnings or restrictions, some girls attempted suicide to coerce parents into granting them freedom to continue their relationships.
This tactic, she said, had led some parents to reluctantly accept these relationships, prioritising their daughters’ safety despite the serious health, legal and socio-economic consequences.
Ms Mintah shared a recent case of a 16-year-old senior high school second year student who took in agrochemicals in a suicide attempt to coerce her parents to allow her to continue dating her boyfriend in a school in Cape Coast.
Many teen girls, according to her, were driven into such acts by intense adolescent hormonal and emotional urges, coupled with little stipends from boys and lovers, and sexual pleasures associated with being adolescent.
She also mentioned another incident where a pregnant woman due for delivery, attempted suicide with poison due to weeks of financial neglect and lack of affection from her husband.
Other individuals, including adults, were driven to despair by factors such as spousal neglect, threats of relationship breakdown, emotional abandonment, stigma, and severe financial hardship.
This situation, she said, signalled a deepening crisis demanding urgent attention, as victims ranging from 14 to 50 years old, often had complex, painful and often preventable underlying causes.
She said women aged 25 to 30 were particularly affected by broken relationships marked by deception, mistrust, infidelity, and neglect from partners they once trusted.
For teenage boys, she said the psychological trauma linked to sports betting with company funds, life savings, salaries and borrowed money, including some male young pastors using church funds for betting have contributed to the recent surge in mental health issues.
Underlying these behaviours, she said were the increasing use and easy access to drugs such as red-red, 225 tramadol-infused energy drinks, marijuana combined with alcohol, locally known as “femude,” “lacka,” “down,” and “toffee.”
She said currently, an average of two mental health-related suicides were recorded per month.
Between January and March this year, she said 31 mental health cases were reported, with 12 linked to marijuana use and19 to alcoholism.
The Municipality has recorded other mental disorders, including depression, emotional and social interaction deficiencies which had left the Municipality with more than 300 mental health patients currently on medication.
Ms Minta urged young girls to approach relationships with caution and resilience, emphasising that suicide was never the answer, even in the darkest moments.
She called for enhanced mental health education, community compassion, institutional collaboration, and open conversations about emotional struggles as more critical than ever.
GNA
Edited by Alice Tettey/Kenneth Odeng Adade