Days before he was found dead in the East River this week, Desmond Amofah, a popular YouTube personality known as Etika whose gaming videos attracted thousands of fans, recorded an eight-minute video that worried, rather than amused, his followers.

In the video, which has since been removed by YouTube but was copied and posted in other online forums, Mr. Amofah, 29, speaks to the camera as he walks down a street. The sounds of the city — sirens, traffic — form a backdrop to his reflections on life and mental illness and his apologies to family and friends.

At times emotional, he says he had turned down help from people who offered it to him. “One thing I did not realize was that the walls were closing around me so fast,” he says.

Alarmed family members and friends alerted the New York Police Department, which reported him missing on June 20. His personal belongings were later found on the Manhattan Bridge, and on Wednesday, the authorities confirmed that he had died by suicide.