Content Note: This essay discusses mental health, including references to suicide and self-harm.
For a long time, I believed mental health struggles belonged to other people, far from Ghana. There is this unspoken idea that Ghanaians are God’s favourite, untouched by such things. On TV, mental illness looked like teenagers in American or European movies: crying in bathroom stalls, skipping school to smoke weed, having panic attacks in the hallways, or talking to therapists. It was all foreign, and I couldn't relate to them; I felt that issues like that were exaggerated. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand stress or sadness; I just rarely saw anyone in Ghana wrestle mental illness openly. The few who did, wandered the streets insane; their pain visible only because it had nowhere else to hide. People believed they should be locked away, though in truth, there are hardly any walls built to hold such suffering.
Growing up, the air was always full of noise, chatter, and activity; children playing in groups outside, women cooking and laughing loudly with their neighbours, and men competing to have their radios heard above the rest. There was hardly room for silence, and if someone was withdrawn, it wasn’t labelled depression. If a friend’s hands trembled or they paced too much, no one spoke of anxiety. And so, I thought: Maybe mental health struggles just don’t exist here. Maybe it’s genetics? Or cultural exposure? Or perhaps we are just immune?
I was wrong. Completely.
A 2021 nationwide study of 2,456 Ghanaians by Amu and colleagues found that 25.2 per cent showed depression, 53.3 per cent anxiety, and 9.7 per cent stress, with more than half of all participants experiencing at least one of these conditions. Similarly, an analysis by Amenah and colleagues in 2025, drawing data from the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel survey, estimated depression rates of 27-31 per cent from 2009 to 2019. The numbers are sobering. Yet, the words depression and anxiety are hardly part of our daily vocabulary. If you are sad, you are just… sad. If you are anxious, people will just say you are a scaredy-cat or under pressure. If someone seemed different—maybe always quiet or moody—we’d call them ‘too knowing’, pompous, or antisocial.
I remember my friend’s roommate in university. We dismissed her as weird. She used to hum quietly while arranging her books, eyes darting around the room as if following thoughts no one else could see. But one day, she went beyond weird and threatened the whole school, and only after that was she referred to the hospital and diagnosed with schizophrenia. Even then, instead of relief that there was a medical explanation, her family still insisted it was spiritual. So even though doctors had put a name to what she was going through, society translated it back into silence.
My own brush with mental health struggles came after National Service. When my service ended, I thought I should be relieved. I had done my duty, collected my allowance, and was finally free to step into real life. But instead of relief, I felt a strange heaviness. The future stretched out before me like a blank page on which I didn’t know how to write. The big question was: What if all my years of studying led nowhere? At first, I thought everyone must feel this way after service, but the questions became louder in my head at night. I would lie awake at night staring at the ceiling, the whirring fan growing more audible in the dark, my mind replaying the laughter of friends who had already found jobs or travelled abroad to further their studies. Their LinkedIn updates felt like distant fireworks; beautiful but unreachable. At home, subtle questions from family began to sting: ‘Any job yet?’ ‘So what’s next after service?’ Even when asked with love, they felt like reminders of how far behind I was. Sleep became harder, and my chest tightened when I thought about the future. I kept smiling with friends, but inside, I was unsettled.
That was when I realised: This might be anxiety. Not just ordinary worry, but a thick fog that settles over you even when nothing immediate is wrong. What saved me, unexpectedly, was YouTube. Late at night, I’d watch strangers speak about fear and purpose; TED Talks, faith-based reflections, even random vloggers sharing how they had picked themselves up after failure. Their voices filled the quiet, and the glow of my phone felt like a fragile lifeline, reminding me that I wasn’t alone, that uncertainty was a part of life, and that many had walked through the same fog. Some nights, I’d keep the videos playing long after I should have slept, letting the voices blur into a kind of comfort—proof that I was still here, still holding on.
Interestingly, research by Aggarwal and her team in 2023 shows that many young people rely on religion and spirituality to cope with depression and anxiety. Prayer, music, and community offer comfort, though they don’t erase the pain. And that’s the point: in Ghana, many of us treat the mind with rhythm and faith, quietly doctoring our wounds because formal help feels unreachable. According to a report by the World Health Organisation in 2022, 2.3 million Ghanaians live with mental health conditions, yet about 98 per cent never receive formal psychiatric care. With numbers like that, it makes sense that we rarely see mental illness here; not because it doesn’t exist, but because help feels impossibly far. The few psychiatric hospitals we have are miles away, underfunded, or too costly for most people. My friend’s roommate, who was only diagnosed after her breakdown, could have been helped much earlier if care hadn’t felt like a distant privilege. But even beyond access, many of us simply haven’t been raised to seek mental health care when we need it. For many, the idea of therapy belongs to another world. We’ve learned to hide our struggles behind laughter, church songs, and phrases like ‘hard boy’ and ‘hard girl’.
Now compare that with Western media. From high school movies to sitcoms to dramas, there’s always a character going to therapy, battling anxiety, or navigating an identity crisis. Sometimes, it feels exaggerated, as if every teenager in the U.S. has a mental breakdown at least once in a lifetime. It’s not just movies. When you read Western articles or scroll through social media, people casually share stories about depression, therapy sessions, or anxiety attacks. It’s not necessarily that Westerners struggle more; it’s that they talk more about it. Access makes that easier; when help feels close, so does the language for describing pain. However, where therapy feels distant and self-restraint is taught as strength, words are swallowed before they are spoken.
In Ghana, silence is the default. If you tell your African parents you’re depressed, you might hear, ‘W’abotow? Ɛpɛ dɛ ekyerɛ dɛn? Ɛwɔ edziban a edzi, bia ɛdze wo ti to, na apɔmudzen pa. Obi nya wo ayɛ. Da wo nyankopɔn ase na bɔ mpae!’—meaning, ‘Depressed? What do you mean? You have food, shelter, and good health. Someone wishes to be you. Be grateful to God and pray!’ And so, many of us internalise our struggles. Not that faith is a bad thing; religion is probably the most significant coping mechanism here. In fact, psychologists and mental-health researchers call this religious coping—a concept popularised by Ozcan and colleagues in 2021 to describe how people draw on faith practices such as prayer to manage distress and uncertainty. But sometimes, those prayers take the place of medicine, and people who need treatment or therapy learn to suffer in silence, believing their wounds are only spiritual. Still, it’s easy to understand why faith takes centre stage. In many Ghanaian homes, prayer circles and church gatherings are not just acts of devotion but sources of belonging and reassurance. When life feels uncertain, faith gives language to our fears and offers hope when professional help feels distant or unaffordable. For many, God becomes both counsellor and comforter, the one constant presence in a world that rarely slows down to listen. Meanwhile, in the West, people will go straight to a therapist or psychiatrist.
The long-term effects are tragic: a student at Legon was found dead in their hostel, and another at KNUST who jumped from the eighth floor. The more I paid attention to such news, the more the headlines began to echo; different names, the same ache, returning again and again. Research backs this up. In studies conducted in 2024 among Ghanaian university students, Owusu-Ansah and her team found that roughly 15.2 per cent of students had thought about suicide at some point in their lives, 6.3 per cent had attempted at least once, 24.3 per cent had experienced death wishes, and 6.8 per cent had made suicidal plans. More recent findings in 2024 from the University for Development Studies, Tamale, echo this pattern; Salifu and Yidana reported suicidal ideation rates reaching as high as 24.5 per cent among students.
Yet the national response is always muted. News articles and blogs might run for a day or two, and administrators might release a brief statement; then, all will fall silent. Unlike government scandals that spark outrage and calls for reform, suicide often sinks back into the shadows. If those we lost had been sensitised to mental health issues and knew when to seek help, perhaps tragedy would not have followed.
And so, the cycle continues. More lives are lost while the nation fails to ask: What if these were cries for help we ignored?
On the surface, Ghana is a land of laughter, vibrant schools, bustling markets, and tireless hustle. But beneath, many hide their pain behind smiles and prayers, only to be labelled as spiritual when they finally break down. Faith is a huge part of who we are as Ghanaians, but when schizophrenia is treated as witchcraft, or suicide only as weakness, we miss the chance to give people real help. When prayer replaces treatment entirely, wounds fester.
Still, I don’t want this to end in despair, because we are capable of telling a different story. Imagine a Ghana where the counsellor’s office in SHSs and universities is as frequented as hospitals, where government agencies fund therapy and affordable mental health care, where a young person can say ‘I’m depressed’ without being accused of laziness, or where someone with schizophrenia is offered both prayer and professional treatment, not forced to choose one. Imagine suicide survivors being met with compassion rather than stigma.
We are not as untouched as I once thought; we are not immune, and while genetics may play a role, most mental health struggles arise from complex social, emotional, and environmental factors. Maybe that realisation itself is a gift, because once we admit that mental health struggles are real and amongst us, we can begin to build systems that respond.
That’s how change begins; not always with policies or programmes, but with narratives and the courage to say, ‘This is happening here too.’ Because when silence breaks, stigma loses its power. And maybe then, laughter in Ghanaian schools, workplaces, and markets will no longer be a mask, but the sound of a people finally healing.
Isabella Ampofowaa Aduah is a seasoned writer and storyteller whose work explores the intersections of culture, women's empowerment, and mental health. Born and raised in Ghana, she draws inspiration from everyday conversations, Ghanaian traditions, and the hidden struggles people often keep silent about. Her writing reflects a deep commitment to challenging stereotypes, amplifying underrepresented voices, and reimagining narratives in ways that centre dignity and resilience. Her works can be found on liveyourdream.org. When not writing, she enjoys reading, mentoring young women, conducting scientific research, and engaging in late-night conversations about life, faith, and the future. She believes stories can be catalysts for healing and transformation.