Pun­jab Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­si­ty’s UT­SHAH is a flag­ship pro­gram to em­power farm­ers and so­ci­ety to tackle the prob­lem of in­creas­ing sui­cides in Pun­jab. The train­ing of youth as para­pro­fes­sion­als en­ables them to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid to farm­ers in dis­tress. In this ar­ti­cle, Vice Chan­cel­lor of PAU -Baldev Singh Dhillon and Pro­fes­sor of Jour­nal­ism -Sarab­jeet Singh out­line psy­cho­log­i­cal tools and prac­ti­cal ideas to pre­vent sui­cides.

I n In­dia, more than one lakh lives are lost every year due to sui­cides. Sui­cide is a sen­si­tive is­sue and a com­plex phe­nom­e­non. A per­son com­mit­ting sui­cide ex­pe­ri­ences three things in com­mon – a dev­as­tat­ing feel­ing of de­feat; help­less­ness to find an es­cape; and hope­less­ness for get­ting res­cue. One per­ceives life un­bear­able to an ex­tent that only death can pro­vide re­prieve. It is the pain of be­ing tor­tured by one’s own mind. Re­search has of­ten pointed at the so­cio-de­mo­graphic and psy­choso­cial as­pects of sui­cide at­tempters.

Each sui­cide is a per­sonal tragedy that has a rip­ple ef­fect, dra­mat­i­cally al­ter­ing the lives of fam­ily mem­bers, friends etc. At the global level, what­ever may the rea­sons of sui­cides, the com­mon stres­sor is un­met psy­cho­log­i­cal need, the com­mon stim­u­lus is in­tol­er­a­ble psy­cho­log­i­cal pain, the com­mon emo­tion is hope­less­ness, help­less­ness, the com­mon cog­ni­tive state is am­biva­lence and the com­mon act is ag­gres­sion.

Sui­cide is a re­ac­tive cri­sis, yet 100 per­cent pre­ventable. Then why not pre­vent it? So­ci­ol­o­gists be­lieve that sui­cide is not an in­di­vid­ual act rather it is a so­cial fact. It is not the in­di­vid­ual only who is re­spon­si­ble for sui­cide rather the so­ci­ety at large; and the sup­port sys­tem stands guilty for the grue­some act. This gives a cue to sui­cide pre­ven­tion also. While the pre­ven­tive mea­sures for the ag­grieved in­di­vid­ual are im­por­tant; at the same time sen­si­ti­za­tion of so­ci­ety at large is vi­va­cious as well. The on­set of tech­nol­ogy has led to a sit­u­a­tion where the so­cial sup­port sys­tem is fast los­ing ground, lead­ing to a spurt in sui­cide at­tempts.

“Pun­jab Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­si­ty’s flag­ship pro­gramme UT­SHAH, is proac­tively ad­dress­ing the is­sue of farm­ers’ sui­cides by con­sid­er­ing the be­hav­ioral, psy­cho­log­i­cal and cul­tural per­spec­tives, too along with the agri­cul­tural and eco­nomic is­sues.”

Un­der the Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Sci­ence Fund of In­dian Coun­cil of Agri­cul­tural Re­search (ICAR), New Delhi, a pro­ject, ‘Ad­dress­ing Farm­ers’ Sui­cide is­sue through Ca­pac­ity Build­ing of Farm­ing Fam­i­lies’, is op­er­a­tional with Pun­jab Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­sity, Lud­hi­ana as the Lead Cen­tre. PJ Telan­gana State Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­sity, Hy­der­abad, and Marath­wada Agri­cul­tural Uni­ver­sity, Parb­hani (Ma­ha­rash­tra) are the co­op­er­at­ing cen­ters.

This novel ac­tion pro­ject, aptly ti­tled – UT­SHAH, is proac­tively ad­dress­ing the is­sue of farm­ers’ sui­cides by con­sid­er­ing the be­hav­ioral, psy­cho­log­i­cal and cul­tural per­spec­tives, too along with the agri­cul­tural and eco­nomic is­sues. Ca­pac­ity build­ing of fam­i­lies is done through em­pow­er­ment in terms of bat­tling neg­a­tive thoughts, en­abling them with cop­ing skills, fi­nan­cial lit­er­acy, etc. Rural youth are be­ing trained as para­pro­fes­sion­als to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid to the farm­ers in acute dis­tress. The sci­en­tif­i­cally de­vel­oped peer sup­port sys­tem hopes to build hu­man cap­i­tal in rural ar­eas. This ex­per­i­ment holds good for all sec­tions of so­ci­ety.

 Read also : Spirit of Broth­er­hood and coun­sell­ing can pre­vent sui­cides

“Cri­sis sup­port is prime duty of the so­ci­ety. There is a need to strengthen the ‘peo­ple to peo­ple’ con­nec­tion.”

It is dif­fi­cult to find pro­fes­sional men­tal health help or coun­sel­ing ser­vices in In­dia as there is an acute short­age of men­tal-health pro­fes­sion­als. In­dia spends just 0.06 per­cent of its health bud­get on men­tal health which is even less than that of Bangladesh (0.44 per­cent). Ac­cord­ing to WHO fig­ures, the de­vel­oped world spends 4 per­cent of their bud­gets on men­tal health ser­vices that in­clude re­search, in­fra­struc­ture etc. There is an ur­gent need to al­lo­cate re­sources to this sec­tor.

The in­cli­na­tion to­wards sui­cide does not get de­vel­oped in a sin­gle day. It has an en­tan­gled re­la­tion­ship with the past events of a per­son. The sui­ci­dal be­hav­ior largely goes through the four steps – sui­cide ideation, overt in­ten­tion, sui­cide at­tempt and sui­cide com­ple­tion. While the psy­chi­a­trists be­lieve that sui­cide ideation is com­mon. Every­one in their life­time have had these dilem­mas at least once in hours of cri­sis or de­jec­tion. How­ever, at the sec­ond step when one con­fides in some­one one’s idea of sui­cide or starts an­nounc­ing it more openly – that is the alert call. In sec­ond stage, the in­ten­sity in­creases be­cause one starts plan­ning for sui­cide, search­ing for the eas­i­est and per­fect method; as well as the suit­able time to com­mit sui­cide etc.

 Read also : Pun­jab Farmer sui­cides – Are we miss­ing the ele­phant in the room?

The propen­sity of plan­ning leads to­wards the third stage where one tries to com­mit sui­cide. This is ba­si­cally an alarm­ing stage to at­tract at­ten­tion, a cry, a call for help and a sign of hope­less­ness. As per nu­mer­ous re­searches, many sui­cides vic­tims who are saved from their sui­cide at­tempt can­didly con­fess that they did not wish to die. It was just be­cause they were not hav­ing any es­cape from their con­di­tion that they at­tempted sui­cide. If re­quired at­ten­tion is not paid to the per­son who has at­tempted to com­mit sui­cide, the process goes on un­til the com­ple­tion of sui­cide.

“3 Cs can help: Con­nect, Com­mu­ni­cate and Care”

Now the ques­tion arises – How can these sui­cides be averted? The two ba­sic ac­tions by which many sui­cides can be averted are — First: When one is bur­dened with anx­i­ety, stress, help­less­ness, hope­less­ness, fed up with life – he/​she should just share the prob­lems and the wor­ries with near and dear ones. There is a dire need to train peo­ple to speak up, to reach out and stay strong.  Sec­ond: When any­one shares with you his/​her suf­fer­ings, do lis­ten ac­tively and of­fer a help­ing hand. If in the hours of cri­sis, as­sure the dis­tressed one – “Talk to me. You are not alone. You have op­tions. Help is there”. Even this is of im­mense help. The so­ci­ety needs to in­fuse a spirit in a per­son that you are braver than you be­lieve, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think. Tell the dis­tressed per­son that de­spite the things you have been through, it is ok not to be ok. Have hope!

 Read also : Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion – a Chal­lenge in In­dia and the world

The ba­sic first aid which each one of us can ex­er­cise is to be­come a pa­tient lis­tener. Let the ag­grieved per­son ven­ti­late. A promise of con­fi­den­tial­ity, so that the ag­grieved per­son can share his / her prob­lems with­out fear, can go a long way in heal­ing the wounds of a dis­tressed per­son. If so­ci­ety joins hands to help, no one will re­sort to sui­cide. Cri­sis sup­port is prime duty of the so­ci­ety. There is a need to strengthen the ‘peo­ple to peo­ple’ con­nec­tion. A proven pri­mary sui­cide pre­ven­tion strat­egy is to pro­mote the help avail­able in the vicin­ity. Even pro­vi­sion of helpline num­bers can suf­fice. Req­ui­site treat­ment is also avail­able. Early de­tec­tion and treat­ment are the key fac­tors.

The will­ing­ness and abil­ity to work to­gether, cre­at­ing a har­mo­nized so­ci­ety will lead to a pos­i­tive and pro­gres­sive na­tion. There is an im­per­a­tive and ur­gent need to roll out a roadmap and an ad­vo­cacy agenda to­wards con­tour­ing the so­cial fab­ric for con­tri­bu­tion to­wards safe­guard­ing and en­hanc­ing the well­be­ing of farm­ing pop­u­lace, youth as well as so­ci­ety at large. 

It is high time to reach out and save lives. For this, three Cs can help: Con­nect, Com­mu­ni­cate and Care.