Suicide decriminalisation: Open letter to the Minority Leader

Sir, I am a practising psychiatrist in the US and a proud product of the Ghana Medical School Class of 1975. Like others, I frequently collaborate with my counterparts in and out of the country to give back to Ghana.

The goal is to learn from the more scientifically advanced regions such as the US. Lessons can be learned from both successes and failures.

In the area of mental health awareness, developing countries such as Ghana are not too far behind the developed.

Why?

Medical science has not known about the body all at once. Even in the area of the heart and its systems - learning goes on.

The functions of the brain, the most “complex computer” of our body has been a challenge for centuries.

In Europe, where medical sciences began, knowledge about the workings of the mind were late in coming.

The vacuum of understanding was filled by what made sense at the time - witchcraft! (Africa does not have a monopoly on witchcraft theory).

Sadly, some with mental illnesses were killed.

In addition, European kings at the time believed that all their citizens belonged to the throne, body and mind: those whose mental illnesses drove them to attempt to end their pain by taking their own lives in suicide attempts, were persecuted for trying to “damage” the king’s ‘property’.

Advances

With medical advances in the workings of the brain, it became clear that the mysterious changes in one’s personality were from various failures of the workings of the system - similar to the drastic changes, visible and invisible in cardiovascular malfunction (heart and related vessels) stroke, for example.

History bears out that human beings do change their minds with new information.

Europe abolished its suicide laws and mental health policies! The UK did in 1960.

To borrow Professor PLO Lumumba’s words, the medical advances were used by the politicians “for useful transformation of people’s lives.”

In contrast, at independence, Ghana and some other countries borrowed the catalogue of European laws that included the one on suicide, potentially taking away the rights of those with mental illnesses.

Voiceless targets

Unfortunately, those who are targets of the law are, for many reasons, ‘voiceless’ in society.

Identifiable people have been jailed for suicide attempts and I personally know one that narrowly escaped jail and the world is better for it.

It appears that successive governments have not made correcting this injustice in the law a priority.

Sir, as stakeholders of mental health, we were angry and saddened by your words.

However, as the tears and anger are subsiding, I am beginning to see this from another perspective: You are probably a father or grandfather.

You have a soul.

You want the same as everyone to save lives.

The problem in this case is: how?

Alarm

An organisation to whom the world looks to in health matters is the World Health Organisation (WHO).

It has been sounding the alarm on the need to improve mental health issues for a long time.

Per its statistics, almost a million lives will be lost globally to suicide and in 90 per cent of cases, mental illness will be the culprit.

The UN has even muscle-armed developing nations into improving their mental health systems by including proof of improvement in the famous document – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), to which Ghana is a signatory.

Let’s stop legally punishing those who, for no reason other than the gene they inherited or socioeconomic challenges that overwhelm them, develop illnesses that drive them to attempt to end their lives as a solution to their intolerable pain.

For every suicide, there has been many attempts, science tells us.

The greatest risk of completed suicide is previous attempts.

How does one seek help, if it will get one into the dungeon of a jail?

If you have looked into the eyes of a suicide attempter, sir, as I have on many occasions, heard the anguished voice, seen the puzzled face in wonder of how they reached ‘that point’, I am willing to bet that as a father/grandfather and all you are, beyond your profession as a powerful politician, you will come to a conclusion that the act was not from ‘bad behaviour’.

Just maybe, we, in the scientific field, have not been effective in persuading our political partners about the enormity of the problem and the stake they have in its solution.

Honourable Iddrisu, this may be the time - on your watch and history will remember you for it!

In the name of the higher power to whom you serve, let’s do the right thing.

God bless you and Ghana.

The writer is a Diplomate, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology; Fellow, American Psychiatric Association.