Ghana News :: Feature: Jailing Of Suicide Man - Time To Review Our Criminal Code ::: Breaking News | News in Ghana | features

A farmer at Akrofuom, near Adansi in the Ashanti Region, Kwadwo Ababio, is now languishing in jail. His offence was that he attempted suicide.

The Daily Guide reported on May 20,2011 that Kwadwo Ababio had claimed that he was not liked by his townsfolk so he was going to kill himself. He attempted to cut his throat but was saved by an onlooker who reported to the police and Ababio was arrested. He was taken to a nearby hospital and after treatment he was hauled to the court and jailed for three months.

Ababio was ‘convicted on his plea of guilty to the charge of attempted suicide, contrary to section 57 of Act 29/60,’ the report says.

You can imagine the reaction on line to the story. One contributor said ‘oh Ghana, this guy has been jailed for a psychological condition’.

That is my concern here. It is well known that about 95 per cent of all cases of suicide and attempted suicide suffer from mental illness, most of which is depression.

Only a few cases of suicide, like suicide bombing and suicide for religious reasons do not have mental illness underlying them. This means that invariably if one attempts suicide and is jailed, the chances are that we will be jailing somebody who has a mental problem.

In the last few years, we have had increasing media reportage of cases of suicide and attempted suicide. Perhaps the most prominent of them include Georgina Pipson who, prior to the suicide by ingesting poison, had killed her five children by same route. Eventually it came out that she had depression after childbirth.

Then there is the case of Dr Yankah, a surgeon, who committed suicide by hanging himself. It came out that he was also depressed. There are many other such cases in which media reports indicated that they had features of depression prior to the suicide.

The law in question is the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29) Section 57 (2) which says: ‘whoever attempts to commit suicide shall be guilty of a misdemeanour’. This law is, in fairness, based on the common law system of our British colonial masters. This same law pertains in many other Commonwealth countries by virtue of their common heritage.

Rather interestingly, Britain itself has changed this law based on the scientific knowledge that most suicidal people have mental disorders. In India, for instance, a group of psychiatrists and lawyers had to engage the government in public interest strategic litigation to expunge that clause from their statutes and that happened only last year. I am hoping the government will not want to wait till we also embark on such a venture.

In part, the criminal code also subsists on our society’s abhorrence of suicide as a shameful conduct and a curse to the family and society. Thus traditionally anyone who dies through suicide is not given a ‘fitting’ burial. But this concept should change, now that we know and understand the dynamics of suicide.

But it is not only suicide which is criminalised that requires expunction; depression after childbirth which is called postpartum depression, is also criminalised. Section 52 of the same Criminal Code cited above says: ‘A person who intentionally causes the death of another person by unlawful harm shall be guilty of only manslaughter and not of murder or attempt to murder, if – (d) being a woman she caused the death of her child, being a child under the age of twelve months, at a time when the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of her not fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child or by reason of the effect of lactation consequent upon the birth of the child.’

The clause recognises that a woman may kill her child due to the influence of the childbirth per se, yet it goes on to criminalise it. That is serious and requires modification. Since that is mental illness, to criminalise the conduct which is the result of the state of mind is to criminalise mental illness for which we need to expunge that.

As it were, if Georgina Pipson had not died she would have been convicted on two counts of infanticide (killing of her children) and attempted suicide, yet both actions are the result of mental illness.

What an injustice! When it is rather the state or society that should be penalised for not putting in place the necessary structures to treat her, we are punishing her for our failure to treat her.

The right to health, and specifically the right to mental health, is a fundamental human right which the state should respect, protect and fulfil. As health is not complete without mental health, the state is bound to ensure the mental health of its citizens and to ensure that mentally ill persons receive care.

There are many international and local treaties on the right to health and mental health. The latest of these international instruments is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability (CRPD).

This document was opened by the UN for signing on March 30, 2007 and the same date Ghana signed it. We have not ratified it though. Any existing law that contradicts this instrument must either be expunged from the countryÂ’ statutes or be modified.

CRPD Article 25 Subsection (f) says the State shall ‘Prevent discriminatory denial of health care or health services or food and fluids on the basis of disability.’ By this clause any person who attempts suicide, or any woman who has given birth within one year and attempts to kill the child, on the basis of current knowledge that such a person most likely has a mental illness, should first be taken for psychiatric or psychological assessment before being taken through the judicial system. Failure to do so is gross violation of the rights of the individual.

Kwadwo Ababio obviously must have been depressed. He said the townsfolk do not like him. He could be paranoid as part of his depression and also be having delusions that life is not worth living. If so he really deserved the societyÂ’s attention rather than condemnation.

I cannot help but to link this situation to our continued failure to pass the mental health bill. The current or old mental health legislation, the NRCD 30 of 1972, is silent on what to do with attempted suicide. The draft mental health bill, whose passage we have been crying for the last five years, is currently in Parliament.

It has a clear and unambiguous provision on attempted suicide. It says in Clause 76 subsection (10) that ‘A person who attempts suicide should first be suspected of mental disorder and taken for psychiatric assessment and if found mentally healthy, may be prosecuted.Â’ If this bill had been passed, even without the repeal of the criminal code the lawyers and judge could have used this provision for justice on Kwadwo Ababio.

As it is Kwadwo Ababio is languishing needlessly in jail with his depression, possibly. That will worsen the condition and with the least opportunity he will commit suicide there. Or else he will remain in jail, come back after three months with his depression and can complete his mission of suicide thereafter.

The UN Commissioner on the Right to Health, I understand, will be in town soon. I pray that this will be one of the areas he will look at to ensure that we take issues of the mentally ill very seriously.

It is our recommendation that we take steps to pass the mental health bill without any further delay. It will be my greatest disappointment in parliament if they rise from their current sitting without passing it. It would also mean to me that we as a society, from the ordinary man on the street through the Ministry of Health to the government, just cannot be bothered by the plight of the mentally ill.

In that case we should blame ourselves for the increased spate of suicides, homicides and other social vices like child defilement, armed robbery, drug abuse, drug trafficking, etc, all of which have their roots in mental health issues.

In the short term we urge the Director-General of Prisons to have Kwadwo Ababio assessed for his mental health and the Chief Justice to call for review of his case. We also call for review of the Criminal Code. While working on the review of the Criminal Code Act 29.

Sections 52 and 57 which criminalise attempted suicide and postpartum depression, we urge Parliament as a matter of duty to the good people of Ghana, to pass the mental health bill.

While waiting for the review of the criminal code and the passage of the mental health bill, we urge the Inspector-General of Police and the Chief Justice to issue a policy that will instruct the police and bench that all cases of attempted suicide should first be sent to the psychiatrist for assessment before proceeding to prosecute.

The Ministry of Health may also need to urge all health facilities to have cases of attempted suicide assessed for psychological disorders and not simply discharge them home after managing the initial complication of the attempted suicide. If they had done so in the case of Kwadwo Ababio the case may not have ended the way it did.

The writer is the Chief Psychiatrist,Ghana Health Service.