Suicide, which is one of the leading causes of death in the country, originally used to be the preserve of adults in our society.

However, over the years, there has been a different trend which is the involvement of children and adolescents in the act.

Acting Director of the Center for Aging Studies at the University of Ghana, Prof. Joseph Osafo has shared light on the possible causes of the rising cases of suicide especially by children.

According to him, exposing children to television without supervision can be very dangerous due to the different contents out there which are bad for children's consumption.

Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, he noted the violent movies and aggressive cartoons watched by these children create unnecessary competition in their minds which can pose serious harm.

“Recent studies indicate that if you open up your child to competitive games, it structures their brain and when a child becomes very competitive, it doesn’t help their mental health because it breaks easily during competition.”

“So if you see children exposed to watching television over and over again, watching all kinds of cartoons that are aggression driven, that’s how they get exposed," he said.

Prof. Osafo also mentioned the negative impact of social media on kids.

He said children are exposed to all forms of cyberbullies on social media and all these harmful acts are learned.

Meanwhile, he also emphasised the need to train the media on how suicidal cases should be reported due to children’s exposure to television and social media.

He criticised journalists and some bloggers on how they narrate suicidal stories especially giving fine details and showing disturbing images.

According to him, children get exposed to these contents and could learn suicidal acts from them and during depressing times, when they feel they are going through a lot and cannot take it anymore, they practice whatever they learned from the media.

“One of the things we’ve been trying which we’re going to repeat this year is to continue to train the media in the reportage of suicidal cases.”

“You tell the story and you give gory pictures and very fine details of how the person ended his life, and they forget that this is going to be downloaded and kept by a child or anybody who may be going through some distress.”

“And at the slightest provocation, because the person has been reading this and knows how to act on it, he/she just takes his/her life,” he explained.

Joy News has released a new documentary titled “Whispers in the Dark” which is set to air at 8 pm on Monday, August 14, 2023.

The producer of the documentary, Ohemeng Tawiah said he was interested in what could cause children as young as seven years to contemplate suicide or even make attempts.

According to him, Ghana was still criminalising suicide at the time he began his investigation about 10 years ago, and this only meant that persons who attempted suicide were determined to succeed for them not to be arrested.

“So that is what informed my decision to go into suicide involving minors in our society and the things that I discovered are mind-boggling,” he said.

This, according to him, has shattered many families and has left some still mourning.