Abstract
The current article presents the results of a systematic review of a maternal filicide-suicide incident that occurred in Ghana in 2010. In this case, a 33-year-old mother with a history of mental illness and psychiatric hospitalizations, kidnapped all five of her children from her estranged boyfriend, the custodial father. She poisoned them to death with a liquid detergent, arranged their bodies neatly on a bed in her own bedroom, and then telephoned the father of the children to come and collect them. Her semi-conscious body was found two days later in an abandoned automobile. She had ingested the same type of poisonous chemical she used to kill the children. Case information shows that although she suffered from schizophrenia and depression, her psychiatric maladies were exacerbated by relationship breakdown with her boyfriend and separation from her children in a pronatalist society that extols marriage. The stigma of mental illness, chronic shortage of psychiatric resources and medicines, and the absence of national anti-suicide prevention programs did not help alleviate the situation. The goal of the study was to help address the paucity of scholarship on maternal filicide-suicides in non-Western, non-industrialized societies, including Ghana.
Recommended Citation
Adinkrah, Mensah
(2019)
"A Case Study of a Maternal Filicide-Suicide in Ghana: The Role of Culture and Mental Health,"
African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies: Vol. 12:
Iss.
1, Article 13.
Available at:
https://digitalscholarship.tsu.edu/ajcjs/vol12/iss1/13
