Fosu: 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.
According to Ghana News Agency, there is a growing trend of young girls aged 14 and above using attempted suicide as a desperate means to pressure parents into accepting their romantic relationships with boy-lovers. Ms. Minta revealed that these 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 explained that many victims engaged in secret intimate relationships unknown to their parents, but when their parents intervene with warnings or restrictions, some girls attempted suicide to coerce their parents into granting them the freedom to continue their relationships. This tactic has led some parents to reluctantly accept these relationships, prioritizing their daughters’ safety despite the serious health, legal, and socio-economic consequences.
Ms. Minta shared a recent case of a 16-year-old senior high school second-year student who ingested agrochemicals in a suicide attempt to coerce her parents to allow her to continue dating her boyfriend in a school in Cape Coast. Many teenage girls, she noted, were driven into such acts by intense adolescent hormonal and emotional urges, coupled with little stipends from boyfriends and sexual pleasures associated with being adolescents.
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 signals a deepening crisis demanding urgent attention, as victims ranging from 14 to 50 years old often had complex, painful, and often preventable underlying causes. Ms. Minta noted that 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, psychological trauma linked to sports betting with company funds, life savings, salaries, and borrowed money, including some young male pastors using church funds for betting, has contributed to the recent surge in mental health issues. Underlying these behaviors is 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.’
Currently, an average of two mental health-related suicides are recorded per month. Between January and March this year, 31 mental health cases were reported, with 12 linked to marijuana use and 19 to alcoholism. The Municipality has recorded other mental disorders, including depression, and emotional and social interaction deficiencies, leaving the Municipality with more than 300 mental health patients currently on medication.
Ms. Minta urged young girls to approach relationships with caution and resilience, emphasizing 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.