Kokuko, a security guard, run amok semi-naked with a loose noose around his neck. He held the end of the rope with his left hand and cried out: "Help me write my death note."
Before his public act, he had for sometime acted strangely; he soliloquized most of the time, throws his hands in the air, and sometimes chases real and imagined flies around.
Some men came around to persuade him to abandon his suicide intent but a scuffle ensued.
The first set of three men who attempted de-possessing him of his death cord were all thrown down. Panic seized those on the verge to join the rescue squad as shouts for reinforcement reached its cacophonic crescendo.
He sped towards his room now stark naked with his veins bulged to bursting limits and his "pestle" dangling left to and right rhythmically he took giant strides to escape.
He banged the door of his room after a swift entry and turned the key hastily. Rescuers stood for few seconds and lost thread of the next line of action. Then one of them took a pestle leaning against a wall nearby and hit the lock a number of times before the door flew opened.
Powerful hands pinned Kokuko on the ground as they pounced on him. They used his death cable to tie him up and bundled him straight to the Ankafo Psychiatric hospital.
"When will these witches and wizards halt their attacks on decent people", an old woman said.
"Kill me first before you make him insane", the 65 year old Abana Samba, mother of Kokuko said as she sobbed.
Worsening economic conditions had plunged Kokuko into a two pronged dilemma; a derailed mental condition and a vehement urge to terminate his life.
Kokuko who was recovering few weeks after he was sent to the hospital said: "Agitations for better job conditions failed and creditors crossed my path wherever I go", he said.
He told the GNA: "I know for a fact that the monthly charge payable to a security guard is very high but the management my Company pay less than GH �50.00 a month as my salary. My ten year service with this company yielded nothing than a tall mountain of debt that continued to grow."
"How will I pay these debts, the school fees, and the rent? Oh the next meal, run riot in my mind", he said, adding that was the last he could recall until he lost balance of his memory.
Is this phenomenon usual? The Ghana News Agency (GNA) asked Dr. Akwesi Ossei, Chief Psychiatric of the Ghana Health.
"Though the use of cannabis, heroin and other narcotic based drugs are identified is a major cause of mental disorder but there are other serious causes of mental problems one of which was economic", he said.
"When people run into huge debts and are not sure how they could pay, where their next meal comes from, how they pay school fees for their children, when rent advances exhaust as the days wheel in the face of a nagging landlord or lady and utility bills swell, they could lead to mental problems."
Dr. Ossei said: "Students who sniff cocaine, cannabis, heroin in order to study rather prepare themselves for the journey to the world of madness."
He said survivors of traumatized ordeals such as armed robbery, fire out breaks, war and serious accidents could lead to psychiatric problems.
"I was petrified and failed to reconcile myself to the damning sight of another man raping my wife", said a man who survived the armed robbery attack but ended up in a psychiatric hospital. "I did not know how his bullet missed me", he said adding: "I thought I will die."
Dr Ossei said when these thoughts linger, they trigger mental disorder.
"My parents perished in the accident, their battered bodies tell the fatality of the accident but I survived for reasons I cannot narrate", said a young girl in Accra who lost her parents in an accident.
He identified failed marital relationships as one of the main causes of psychiatric challenges among adults. When the deserted partner thinks about how much he or she had invested in the relationship, pain, the anguish and the groans that follow such thoughts afflict victims with mental dilemmas.
Infirmities brought about by diseases and conditions such as malaria, epileptics, river blindness, according to Dr. Osei, could lead to mental problems.
Another source of mental sickness is heredity. Parents who have psychiatric problems are highly likely to transmit it to their children, making them genetically vulnerable.
However, it is not always the case that the progeny of psychiatric patients contract the diseases.
According to Dr. Ossei, pregnant women who failed to attend antenatal care may be prone to psychiatric problems than those that attended.
He explained that through antenatal care, physicians are able to determine pregnant women who could deliver naturally and those that had to undergo caesarian operation.
Pregnant women who were forced to labour than have babies through caesarian section have psychiatric challenges because of the wave of pain they were forced to endue.
My memory hoards much stuff making retrieval a dilemma unless correlate events trigger remembrance.Dr. Akwesi made the point that psychiatric problems were realisms, they were physical not metaphysical.
"Psychiatric problems are not attributable to witchcraft or wizards, it is as curable as any disease." he said.
We should therefore encourage relatives and friends who show signs of madness to go for a cure at the Ankafo, Cape Coast or Accra Psychiatric hospital and when they are well we should accept them wholeheartedly into our fold.
It would be a perfect arrangement for all hospitals in Ghana to have psychiatric units as it is the case of maternity unit to all hospitals.
Finally, if know you are carrying a sinful bag of an ostracized family member cured of a mental illness, bring him or her home for there is no place like home.
By Emmanuel Kpeglah