It's not just a game.

I have resisted the urge to comment on the story about the Kenyan man who hanged himself after Arsenal's semi-final exit last week. In part this has been because I have way to much work to do and should be devoting my writing energies to more important things. However, I can no longer let this pass.

I think it is a completely naive person who understands nothing about depression and despair who believes that Sulieman Omondi killed himself because Arsenal lost a football match. The initial reports from the BBC and other news outlets were made with a tinge of wry humour - African fan, so wild and deranged with grief over the loss of a match he kills himself, they said. Much of the reporting included comments about the passion for football in Africa and how fights and brawls have cast shadows over televised European matches in many African countries. This story, it seemed, epitomised just how out of control an African man can become.

This portrayl of African men as overly-emotional, with wild, uncontrollable passions set off by the smallest (or craziest) things is a long established cultural meme. It dates back hundreds of years and is a stereotype established in stark contrast to Anglo-Saxon notions of male supremacy based depictions of cold, calm, ruthless efficiency - i.e. the British stiff upper lip. To be in possession of one's emotions, to control them and suppress them, is a valued expression of male business acumen and denotes an level of intellectual supremacy.

While I am not going to go as far as to say that the reporting and commentary on this event has been racist, I would suggest that the stereotypes and controlling images described above have had an impact on the way this story has unfolded. The idea that Mr Omondi might have killed himself because he feared for his life after making a large bet he could not honour or because of existing pressures and troubles, did not appear in those initial reports. The complex issues surrounding depression and mental ill-health have not been discussed by those bloggers who continue to write about Mr Omondi as if he was an emotionally unintelligent fool who could not discern the difference between football and his own life.

In all walks of life men and women take their own lives for reasons most people cannot understand. Desperation can make people do all sorts of things as can depression and other mental or physical illnesses. To suggest that Mr Omondi took his life because of a football match is overly simplistic and is perhaps a way for us to make peace with an act many do not understand and could never contemplate. However, it does not do to make light of the plight of this man. For whatever reason he decided his life was not worth living and that is where the tragedy always lies.