Oheneyere Gifty Anti, a Motivational Speaker, has called on Ghanaians to support the campaign on suicide prevention because despite the increased public education, the issue remains a challenge.
She was speaking at a suicide prevention campaign in Accra organized by the Weinglo Family International, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO).
Oheneyere Anti said suicide prevention was a shared responsibility and, therefore, everyone needed to play a role by being one another’s keeper, creating more awareness, investing in suicide prevention, and supporting people suffering from conditions that made them vulnerable.
She said Ghanaians attitude towards suicide was encouraging and now beginning to appreciate and understand it as a public health issue rather than a perceived moral weakness or religious infraction as it had erroneously been assumed in the past.
She said people who took or planned to take their lives represented a heterogeneous group with unique, complex and multi-faceted casual influences preceding their final act.
“These challenges can be overcome by adopting a multi-level and cohesive approach to suicide prevention,” she said, and called on all to be key players in the campaign.
“You can make a difference as a member of the society, as a child, a neighbour, a parent, a friend or as a colleague,’’ she said.
Mrs Gloria Boatemaah Andoh, the Chief Executive Officer of the NGO, said although the country had made some efforts at suicide prevention without empirical data, winning the campaign to end it would be a difficult task.
She, therefore, appealed to benevolent organisations, civil society groups and the public to support the fight against suicide by donating towards research into the area.
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