Are parents keen on what kind of films their children are watching or games they are playing?
Police have launched investigations after a six year old boy accidentally committed suicide while playing.
Residents of Waruku, Kangemi, Nairobi County are still in shock of incident took place on Wednesday 5th December as the young boy played with the rest outside.
One of the children who was playing with him said they were playing when the deceased decided to imitate a death scene he had watched in a movie but the incident turned fatal.
One of the children then ran to get the deceased’s mother but by the time she got there her son was no more.
Police arrived and took the boy’s body away amidst stares of onlookers.
Several other cases of teen and pre-teen suicides have lately been reported and although the police do not have exhaustive data on the number of child and teen suicides, media reports serve to lift the veil that shields what sociologists and psychiatrists have termed “a psycho-social problem”.
According to Dr Mary Wahome, a psychiatrist,society is to blame for the high number of teens who commit suicide.
“With all the frustrations in the society like poverty, the children are left feeling hopeless and helpless. They do not have people to turn to, they are judged when they want to express their feelings and they have to deal with pent up frustrations and issues that are beyond them,” said Dr Wahome.
She cited excessive access to technology through mobile phones, iPads and computers by children as the most prominent reason they commit suicide.
A Pew Research Centre report indicates that smartphone ownership accounted for more than 50 per cent of teenage depression in 2012, when this phenomenon began to increase.
Last year, a teenager committed suicide in Kamukunji, Nairobi, after playing an online game – Blue Whale Challenge that dares players to take their own lives.