Comedy performer Funny Face has talked openly about the terrifying incidents that occurred as he was recovering from depression.
He revealed this while speaking to Giovanni Caleb and AJ Sarpong on Accra-based 3FM. He was born Benson Nana Yaw Oduro Boateng.
He was informed that his “brother [had] perished” while he was “recovering and fighting to return back to life.”
“They told me the news at the psychiatric [hospital],” he bemoaned.
“They broke the news to me,” he said, recalling that it “made me feel I wanted to die.”
The “Cow & Chicken” star had more upsetting stories to share about her battle with depression.
He admitted that after being released and going home, he needed the help of his manager, Genesis, who “stepped in for me,” to keep him steady.
Genesis was a much-needed prop since, “at the end of the day, that’s when it is worse than,” the period before or during despair.
“[It’s] because you’ve done a lot of stuff. You come back and you realise [them and ask yourself] ‘So did I really do this? Did I really say this?’” he argued, explaining that at this stage, “the consequences and the guilt will be weighing on you.”
Oscilatting between comedy and seriousness, he recounted that during this time he was also robbed.
“Armed robbers didn’t spare me,” he said, shaking his head and speaking in the rhythm and cadence typical of his stage persona. “I was robbed. Armed robbers came to rob me.”
He said everything in his room was taken except for “an iron; a yellow iron.”
Providing more details, he said “I only had Monday to rest.”
The next day, “Tuesday, 6 December [2022],” his father died. “Yeah, someone who had [just] come back from the psychiatric [hospital].”
Dano Milk’s latest brand ambassador, he took a moment to encourage anyone fighting depression to seek help; to identify “that one person that you trust and tell the person everything and listen to the advise they’ll give you so you stay real. In my case, it was my manager.”
“When I got back, everything was spoilt,” he noted. “And I’m just telling you how bad it got trying to be on my feet again.
“I lost my dad, armed robbers came to rob me – we kept it a secret because my mother told me not to bring that news out saying; ‘You’ve suffered enough. Keep that one’.”
The actor and music act noted that the only reason he had for revealing these details of his recovery was to encourage those “at the edge” struggling with depression.
“I’ve been there before. I wanted to kill myself,” he said. “I went to buy rat poison.”
Half-seriously, he commented that: “It was when I wanted to take my change, that’s when I knew I was not ready to die.”
“Because if you want to die, why are you waiting for change,” he noted, albeit in a jocular fashion.
To anyone who is at the point of ending their life by suicide, he urged, “as a brother who knows what you’re going through – don’t do it!”
“Don’t do it because you’ll regret at [the] Awudome [cemetery],” he joked. “You’ll regret it but you can’t come back.”
“Please don’t do it,” he appealed.
A Christian, he exhorted that: “Everything you’re going through right now, if you stay focused and steadfast in the Lord, trust me [in the] end, you’ll look back and you’ll laugh. I’m a living testimony telling you this.”
On Saturday, April 8, the Funny Face-Dano Health Walk takes place where patrons will be with the star from Dansoman Exhibition Roundabout to the Bukom Arena.
On Wednesday October 20, 2021, the Ghana Police Service (GPS) announced that Funny Face had been referred to a psychiatric hospital for medical examination.
