Conditions on KNUST campus play major role in students attempting suicide – Students

Students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) are raising concern over the conditions on campus they say play major role in students sometimes contemplating and sometimes succeeding in committing suicide.

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023, social media was awash with a video of a medical student hanging from the eighth floor in one of the hostels on campus.

His attempt was however thwarted when student sounded the alarm and managed to pull him back onto the balcony.

Pictures of notes circulating claiming to be the student’s would-be suicide note attributed his decision to sleep paralysis, seeing demons and not enough reason to continue living.

A KNUST student, Nana Ama in an interview with Starr News said several existing conditions on campus leaves students predisposed to taking their own lives.

“…are Counsellors available, are they at our disposal, do we know them? Do they just show up when there is a problem? These questions are to be answered by the authorities. We have a counselling centre, we have peer counsellors, we have hall counsellors, but do we know them? I will say as a university we have failed in that. There’s too much tension, there’s too much pressure in the school in the sense that there’s no form of entertainment unless you have your own money to treat yourself or take yourself out."

She added: “A whole lot of things have been banned, we are always going to school, from class to church, church to class, there’s no hall week, there’s no morale. Friday evening, I will walk from Brunei to Konti just to witness morale, it was just to calm me down. How they will sing the song, when you are done, you just come back to your room. This is the situation, there’s nothing like that, there’s no hall week, after mid-sem, Monday you continue with serious studies. Nothing at all, nothing. So if this is happening, whom are we to blame? You will just see a letter tomorrow or probably today with people saying you can reach out to me, talk to your college counsellors. After two days, it will be a dead case.”