The tragic death of a 60-year-old Kirinyaga man, who left chilling instructions for his burial before plunging into the River Nyamindi, has ripped the veil off Kenya’s silent mental health epidemic and the crushing cost of dying poor.

Mwangi Kimunyu’s body was retrieved from the cold waters of the River Nyamindi on Tuesday, days after he issued a haunting ultimatum to his village in Gichugu. He had told neighbors that should he die in the river, he must be buried within 24 hours—a desperate final wish from a man whom relatives say had battled untreated mental distress for years. His death is not an isolated tragedy but a grim data point in what Principal Secretary for Public Health Mary Muthoni has now classified as a "national crisis" of male suicide.

The High Cost of Death

For Kimunyu’s family, the tragedy of his suicide has been compounded by the bureaucracy of the living. Despite his final wish for a swift burial, his grieving sister, Ann Njeri, is stuck in a heartbreaking limbo. The family is unable to raise the KES 10,000 required for a post-mortem examination, a mandatory police requirement before a burial permit can be issued.

"He said that if he threw himself into the river, he should be buried within 24 hours," Njeri recounted, fighting back tears outside the local mortuary. [...](asc_slot://start-slot-3)"He was a good person, friendly to everyone, but he never married. Now, the police say we must pay KES 10,000. We do not have it. Who will help us bury him?"

• A Systemic Failure: The standoff highlights a cruel irony in rural Kenya: families are often too poor to treat their mentally ill relatives, and too poor to bury them when the system fails.
• The "Bachelor" Stigma: Kimunyu’s 90-year-old mother, Peris Wanjiru, expressed a despair familiar to many parents of unwed men in Central Kenya. "He was not married and does not belong to any community group that can help us," she lamented, underscoring the breakdown of traditional social safety nets.

"Men Are Dying in Silence"

The incident comes just days after PS Mary Muthoni, speaking at a separate burial in the same constituency, raised the alarm over the skyrocketing rates of suicide among men in the Mt.Kenya region. Attributing the trend to untreated mental illness, alcoholism, and the collapse of the agrarian economy, Muthoni urged families to stop treating depression as a taboo.

"Mental illness should not be ignored or treated as a taboo. Families must support their loved ones when they notice behavioral changes instead of condemning them," Muthoni warned. Her sentiments were echoed by the Catholic Church, with Father Martin Wanyoike of Difathas Parish revealing he has presided over an "alarming" number of funerals for men who died by suicide in the last six months.

The Kenyan Context

Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) suggests that men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women, a gap that is widening as economic pressures mount. In Kirinyaga, where the coffee and rice sectors have faced volatility, the correlation between financial despair and mental breakdown is palpable.

For Mwangi Kimunyu, the system failed him twice: first, by ignoring his distress calls, and now, by denying him the dignity of a resting place due to a KES 10,000 fee. As his body lies in the morgue, it stands as a silent indictment of a society that has yet to figure out how to save its men.