All is set for the Mental Health Authority to mark World Mental Health Day Saturday, 10th October 2020 on the Theme: Mental Health for all: Greater Investment-Greater Access.
In 2015, it was reported that Ghana records 1,500 suicide cases annually, mostly as a result of depression.
According to fact sheets of the WHO, nearly 800,000 people commit suicide every year, and that, a prior suicide attempt is the single most important risk factor for suicide in the general population.
Suicide was thus the second leading cause of death among the age range of 15 and 29 in 2015 while 78 percent of global suicides occur in low and middle-income countries.
This year’s World Mental Health Day, on 10 October, comes at a time when our daily lives have changed considerably as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The past months have brought many challenges: for health-care workers, providing care in difficult circumstances, going to work fearful of bringing COVID-19 home with them; for students, adapting to taking classes from home, with little contact with teachers and friends, and anxious about their futures; for workers whose livelihoods are threatened; for the vast number of people caught in poverty or in fragile humanitarian settings with extremely limited protection from COVID-19; and for people with mental health conditions, many experiencing even greater social isolation than before.
The Mental Health Authority is pushing for the decriminalization of suicide in Ghana.
The World Health Organization has revealed that a person dies every 40 seconds from suicide worldwide.
In Ghana, The Criminal Offences Act 1960 (Act 29) indicates that a person who plans to commit suicide commits a first-degree felony whether or not the suicide was successful.
This law, according to the Authority rather encourages such persons to take every measure not to fail in their acts and also discourages suicidal persons from reporting suicidal crises early enough for the help.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Kofi Atakora
