A young woman has allegedly committed suicide at Ajoa, a community in the Ahanta West Municipality of the Western Region.
The unidentified woman hanged her son before hanging herself.
Their bodies were found in an uncompleted building in the early hours of Wednesday, January 18, 2023.
Eyewitnesses who discovered the bodies said they reported to work on the building only to be met with the sad scene.
“We came to work in the building as labourers and saw the lifeless body of the lady and her son when we got there,” said Nana Yaw, an eyewitness.
“She could be in her early twenties whilst her son would be around four years. We don’t know where they come from, and we don’t know any of their family members. They are still there on the ropes,” Nana Yaw added.
While confirming the news to the media, Assembly Member for Ajoa, Robert James Yankey, said the victim and her son are not from the community.
“Information I have gathered is that residents around the community saw the young lady begging for money with her son yesterday around 4:00 pm. Nobody saw them again until this morning when we saw them dead in the uncompleted building. We do not know her in this community, so we believe she came from somewhere else,” he said.
This comes after a 29-year-old mobile money vendor committed suicide at Sehwi Bodi in the same region a few days ago.
He is said to have used a sponge to hang himself in his room.
Meanwhile, in Ghana, about 1500 suicide cases are reported annually, and in each reported case of suicide are four unreported cases, summing the number of unreported cases to almost 6000 yearly.
Available statistics indicate that 6.6 per cent of every 1,000 persons committed suicide in 2020 in Ghana.
According to Dr Ebenezer Tetteh Kpalam, a Clinical Psychologist, four of every five suicide cases could have been prevented if help had been sought.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) also explains that Africa has the highest rate of people dying by suicide globally.
The continent is said to have one psychiatrist for every 500,000 inhabitants – 100 times less than the WHO recommendation.
The agency added that mental health problems account for up to 11% of the risk factors associated with suicide.