Is­sues of life and death can­not be han­dled with kid gloves. The au­thor brings his ex­per­tise  to pre­sent a bird’s eye-view of Pun­jab farmer sui­cides and calls for an all out war to en­sure that death-wave is re­placed by love for life in Pun­jab and other parts of the coun­try, where this has only been re­duced to a sta­tis­tic. The PAU Jour­nal­ism teacher also makes a strong case for re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing by all me­dia on sui­cides.

The Supreme Court has asked the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment to pre­pare a com­pre­hen­sive plan of ac­tion to pre­vent farmer sui­cides, while ob­serv­ing that per­haps the gov­ern­ment was go­ing in the “wrong di­rec­tion” in tack­ling the real prob­lem.

3 cru­cial state­ments can be made about sui­cides:
1. It is a com­plex prob­lem.
2. It is re­ac­tive.
3. It is pre­ventable.

Sui­cide is of­ten used as an es­cape from painful cir­cum­stances as well as set­tling of scores. A per­son com­mit­ting sui­cide ex­pe­ri­ences 3 things in com­mon –
I. a shat­ter­ing feel­ing of de­feat;
II. in­abil­ity to find an es­cape; and
III. loss of hope for get­ting res­cue.

One per­ceives life as ag­o­niz­ing to an ex­tent that only death can pro­vide re­prieve. De­pres­sion re­mains the cor­ner­stone of all sui­cides. While cor­po­rate houses take steps to im­prov­ing men­tal health of their em­ploy­ees, there is no sys­tem in place to help the farm­ers in main­tain­ing their emo­tional equi­lib­rium in view of suc­ces­sive crop fail­ures and ris­ing debts. Even a lit­tle psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid can ben­e­fit the farm­ers if avail­able. It is be­lieved that about 20 times more sui­cides are at­tempted than com­pleted.

“Sui­cides are:
1. a com­plex prob­lem.
2. re­ac­tive.
3. pre­ventable.”

Presently, a sui­cide pre­ven­tion pro­ject has started un­der the aegis of Na­tional Agri­cul­tural Sci­ence Fund (ICAR). Ti­tled, ‘Ad­dress­ing farm­ers’ sui­cide through ca­pac­ity build­ing of farm­ing fam­i­lies’, the pro­ject aims at ca­pac­ity build­ing of farm­ing fam­i­lies through Peer Sup­port Vol­un­teers (PSVs). These PSVs will be trained to pro­vide psy­cho­log­i­cal first aid to dis­tressed farm­ers in their vil­lages as well as to para­pro­fes­sion­als. The pro­ject is spread over the states of Pun­jab, Ma­ha­rash­tra and Telan­gana.

Dur­ing the course of a ses­sion on sui­cide pre­ven­tion at a re­cent meet at a Uni­ver­sity in Bathinda, dur­ing the tea break, I heard a mid­dle-aged farmer from Muk­t­sar loudly re­mark, “In our vil­lage, three youth have com­mit­ted sui­cides in the last twenty days”. Stunned, I went close to him and en­quired about these sui­cides in de­tail. Asked about the pos­si­ble rea­sons for se­r­ial sui­cides in his vil­lage, he quipped, “Rees! Pun­jabi rees bari karde haan” -Copy­cat. Pun­jabis of­ten en­gage in im­i­ta­tive be­hav­iour.

My mind kept bat­tling with the word ‘Rees’ on the en­tire way back from Bathinda to Lud­hi­ana; my mind’s pen­du­lum swing­ing from call­ing it ‘ab­surd’, to con­sid­er­ing it se­ri­ously. It cer­tainly struck me as a shock­ing and dis­turb­ing fact of Pun­jabi be­hav­iour and a new take on the is­sue. Ac­cord­ing to the farmer, one sui­cide could be­come a com­pelling model for other sui­cides if the first one was eu­lo­gized.

Back at my desk, I started search­ing for lit­er­a­ture re­port­ing ev­i­dence on cor­re­la­tion be­tween sui­cides. Sur­pris­ingly, many stud­ies re­ported that ‘the num­ber of sui­cides in­creased if the me­dia ro­man­ti­cized and dra­ma­tized the de­scrip­tion of sui­ci­dal deaths’. Sev­eral stud­ies have re­vealed how me­dia re­ports tend to ‘ad­ver­tise’ dra­matic and highly lethal meth­ods of sui­cide. Data showed pos­i­tive as­so­ci­a­tion be­tween me­dia in­flu­ences (stim­u­lus) and sui­ci­dal ideation (re­sponse).

“3 com­mon sui­cide ex­pe­ri­ences are:
I. a shat­ter­ing feel­ing of de­feat;
II. in­abil­ity to find an es­cape; and
III. loss of hope for get­ting res­cue.”

Gen­er­ally, when­ever we talk about farmer sui­cides, fin­gers are pointed at econ­o­mists or agri­cul­tural sci­en­tists. Most dis­cus­sions and par­leys on sui­cides are over­taken by is­sues of crop fail­ures, ris­ing debts, new farm­ing tech­niques, how­ever the ele­phant in the room seems to be the psy­cho­log­i­cal as­pect. Agri­cul­tural and fi­nan­cial rea­sons may be the pre­dom­i­nant fac­tors lead­ing to sui­cides but the dom­i­nant fac­tor is the psy­cho­log­i­cal one.

A farmer with a debt of 2 lacs is com­mit­ting sui­cide, but an­other with a debt of 5 lacs is not. Why? What type of sup­port sys­tem is avail­able with the lat­ter? What type of cop­ing skills does the lat­ter have? Can’t we pro­vide the same sup­port sys­tem and cop­ing skills to the for­mer? These and more ques­tions need an­swers.

The World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) has sug­gested train­ing in Psy­cho­log­i­cal First Aid (PFA) to strengthen the sup­port base. PFA is a hu­mane, sup­port­ive and prac­ti­cal help for a fel­low be­ing. It cov­ers both so­cial and psy­cho­log­i­cal sup­port meth­ods. It is not pro­fes­sional coun­selling rather sim­ple first steps like lis­ten­ing to en­able ven­ti­la­tion, help­ing peo­ple con­nect to in­for­ma­tion, ser­vices and so­cial sup­ports with a view to pro­tect them from fur­ther harm. Per­sons trained in PFA can work as para­pro­fes­sion­als in lo­cal se­tups and help in avert­ing many sui­cides.

““Rees! Pun­jabi rees bari karde haan” -Copy­cats. Pun­jabis of­ten en­gage in im­i­ta­tive be­hav­iour.”
A farmer quips about one of the key rea­sons for ris­ing sui­cides.”

It should serve as an eye-opener to me­dia -print, TV and on­line to learn that ir­re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing leads other farm­ers with sim­i­lar con­di­tions to im­i­tate sui­ci­dal acts. In­di­vid­u­als with de­mo­graphic back­ground sim­i­lar to the per­son who com­mit­ted highly pub­li­cized sui­ci­dal act are more at risk. Par­tic­u­lar sub­groups in the farm­ing pop­u­lace viz the farm­ers with same land­hold­ing, same amount of loan and suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion, may be es­pe­cially sus­cep­ti­ble to en­gag­ing in im­i­ta­tive sui­ci­dal be­hav­iours. They are in­flu­enced by the way a sui­cide is re­ported, par­tic­u­larly if the cov­er­age is wide, high-fly­ing, sen­sa­tion­al­ist and clearly de­scribes the method and place of sui­cide. The amount and promi­nence of cov­er­age, with re­peated re­port­ing are strongly as­so­ci­ated with im­i­ta­tive be­hav­iours. Over de­scrip­tion of sui­cide by a par­tic­u­lar method pro­motes sui­cides de­ploy­ing the same method.

In or­der to pro­mote safe me­dia con­tent, the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) in 2008 de­vel­oped guide­lines for the re­port­ing of sui­cides. This in­cludes ed­u­cat­ing peo­ple about sui­cide; avoid­ing both sen­sa­tion­al­ism and nor­mal­i­sa­tion of the act; avoid­ing promi­nence and ex­plicit de­scrip­tion of the method and site of sui­cide; ex­er­cis­ing cau­tion in us­ing pho­tographs or video footage; pro­vid­ing in­for­ma­tion about how to seek help; show­ing due con­sid­er­a­tion for peo­ple be­reaved by sui­cide and more. Celebrity sui­cides should be re­ported with care. Also sui­cide should be re­ferred to as cow­ardly act and a sign of men­tal weak­ness.

The flip side has a ray of hope. Mass me­dia im­i­ta­tion the­ory pre­sumes that if mod­el­ling works in one way (copy­cat sui­cides), it can work in the other way also (pos­i­tive model). Re­spon­si­ble re­port­ing may serve to ed­u­cate the pub­lic about sui­cide, and may en­cour­age those at risk of sui­cide to seek help. Peo­ple are more likely to seek help when ap­pro­pri­ate re­me­dial ser­vices are in­cluded in sui­cide sto­ries.

In­stead of say­ing that ‘man jumped from the top floor of the xyz build­ing on abc Street’, it is bet­ter to say – ‘The per­son ‘fell to death from a lo­cal build­ing’. De­tails like – ‘he used his abc sheet to hang him­self from the ceil­ing fan in the hos­pi­tal room’ can be omit­ted and re­placed with ‘The per­son took his own life in a room’. Us­ing phrases like ‘non-fa­tal ‘or at­tempt on his/​her life’ are bet­ter than stat­ing that it was an ‘un­suc­cess­ful sui­cide’. Words like ‘suc­cess­ful sui­cide’ or ‘com­mit­ted sui­cide’ should be avoided.

The lead for sui­cide re­lated news sto­ries can run like this: ‘In an­other case of a cow­ardly act, a youth (not men­tion­ing age) com­mit­ted sui­cide. He was not ma­ture enough to han­dle the tricky sit­u­a­tions of life.’ This will make any other sui­ci­dal per­son think be­fore try­ing to com­mit sui­cide. Chances are that he will find other ways to deal with the sit­u­a­tion. We need to un­der­stand, that dis­tressed peo­ple are in pain. They need us. Since the sui­ci­dal per­son is al­ready de­pressed, he should be given some al­ter­na­tives and pre­ven­tive mea­sures too. News ar­ti­cles and other me­dia sources can pro­vide lo­cal treat­ment re­source in­for­ma­tion too.

“There is need for more re­strained re­port­ing of sui­cides as part of sui­cide pre­ven­tion strate­gies to de­crease the im­i­ta­tion ef­fect. In­stead of just re­port­ing the sui­ci­dal acts, me­dia should dis­cuss pre­ven­tive mea­sures and take a joint re­spon­si­bil­ity in re­port­ing and pro­ject­ing sui­cides in a more re­spon­si­ble man­ner. Many pre­cious lives can be thus saved.”

Fam­i­lies of sui­cide vic­tims as well as those of abortive sui­cide at­tempts should be han­dled as ‘a call for help’. If ne­glected these may be the un­for­tu­nate fore­run­ners of fu­ture com­pleted ones. There is need for more re­strained re­port­ing of sui­cides as part of sui­cide pre­ven­tion strate­gies to de­crease the im­i­ta­tion ef­fect. In­stead of just re­port­ing the sui­ci­dal acts, me­dia should dis­cuss pre­ven­tive mea­sures and take a joint re­spon­si­bil­ity in re­port­ing and pro­ject­ing sui­cides in a more re­spon­si­ble man­ner. Many pre­cious lives can be thus saved.

Apart from agri­cul­tural and re­mu­ner­a­tive pric­ing so­lu­tions, we need to take care of farm­ers’ men­tal health too. They need to be trained to im­bibe re­silience and cop­ing skills to bat­tle with neg­a­tive thoughts. Fi­nan­cial lit­er­acy and im­por­tance of sav­ings should also be part of farmer train­ings. The psy­cho­log­i­cal and men­tal health is­sues should not be swept un­der the car­pet.

 If you like our sto­ries, do fol­low WSN on Face­book.

The ele­phant in the room seeks di­rec­tion, suc­cour and care. Is any­one lis­ten­ing?