As so­ci­ety copes with the pres­sures of mod­ern times at the mi­cro and macro level, a new pat­tern of prob­lems have come to the fore. Though sui­cide has been a re­al­ity of life since time im­memo­r­ial, it has now emerged as a ma­jor chal­lenge in In­dia and the world. The au­thor is the sheet an­chor of one of the few sui­cide pre­ven­tion net­works in the coun­try. He pre­sents au­then­tic data and stresses upon the need to set up coun­selling cen­tres to tackle this prob­lem.

The word “Sui­cide” has been de­fined as an act in which per­son kills him­self or in­ten­tional self-slaugh­ter, or un­der­tak­ing a mis­sion in­volv­ing his own death, or ac­tion de­struc­tive to one’s own in­ter­ests. Every year, sui­cide is among the top 20 lead­ing causes of death glob­ally for peo­ple of all ages. It is re­spon­si­ble for over 800,000 deaths, which equates to one sui­cide every 40 sec­onds. It is a so­cial evil and a threat to mankind and hu­man­ity it­self as a whole.

An in­crease in num­ber of sui­cides is an alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion and a mat­ter of great con­cern in In­dia. Ac­cord­ing to World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) Sui­cide is an emerg­ing and a se­ri­ous pub­lic health is­sue in In­dia. The most vul­ner­a­ble and af­fected age group is be­tween 15-29 years. The sui­cide mor­tal­ity rate per 100 000 pop­u­la­tion in In­dia is 15.7; the global av­er­age is 10.7 per 100 000.

“In­dia is be­set with nu­mer­ous ma­jor health prob­lems like in­fec­tious dis­eases, mal­nu­tri­tion, ma­ter­nal and in­fant mor­tal­ity and hence, sui­cide pre­ven­tion is ac­corded low pri­or­ity. The men­tal health ser­vices are in­ad­e­quate for the needs of the coun­try of a bil­lion plus peo­ple. The di­min­ish­ing tra­di­tional fam­ily sup­port sys­tems leave peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble to sui­ci­dal be­hav­ior. ”

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port on sta­tis­tics avail­able on the ‘Ac­ci­den­tal Deaths and Sui­cides in In­dia’ pub­lished by Na­tional Crime Records Bu­reau (NCRB) of Min­istry of Home Af­fairs, Govt. of In­dia dur­ing the decade (2005–2015), In­dia recorded an in­crease of 17.3% (1,33,623 in 2015 from 1,13,914 in 2005). The in­crease in num­ber of sui­cides was re­ported each year till 2011 there­after a de­clin­ing trend has been no­ticed till 2014 and it again in­creased by 1.5% in 2015 over 2014 (from 1,31,666 sui­cides in 2014 to 1,33,623 sui­cides in 2015).

Sui­cides in In­dia are gen­er­ally com­mit­ted due to fail­ure in ex­am­i­na­tions, quar­rel with par­ents-in-law, quar­rel with spouse, di­vorce, dowry, love af­fairs, can­cel­la­tion or the in­abil­ity to get mar­ried , il­le­git­i­mate preg­nancy, ex­tra-mar­i­tal af­fairs and con­flicts re­lat­ing to the is­sue of mar­riage, all these fac­tors play a cru­cial role, par­tic­u­larly in the sui­cide of women in In­dia. A dis­tress­ing fea­ture is the fre­quent oc­cur­rence of sui­cide pacts and fam­ily sui­cides, which are more due to so­cial rea­sons and can be viewed as a protest against ar­chaic so­ci­etal norms and ex­pec­ta­tions.

In­dia is be­set with nu­mer­ous ma­jor health prob­lems like in­fec­tious dis­eases, mal­nu­tri­tion, ma­ter­nal and in­fant mor­tal­ity and hence, sui­cide pre­ven­tion is ac­corded low pri­or­ity. The men­tal health ser­vices are in­ad­e­quate for the needs of the coun­try of a bil­lion plus peo­ple. The di­min­ish­ing tra­di­tional fam­ily sup­port sys­tems leave peo­ple vul­ner­a­ble to sui­ci­dal be­hav­ior. A per­son with sui­ci­dal ten­dency needs some­one in whom he could con­fide and off-load some of his ap­pre­hen­sions and prob­lems. If he finds some­one who lis­tens to him, his sui­ci­dal ten­den­cies di­min­ish to large ex­tent, hence there is an emerg­ing need for ex­ter­nal emo­tional sup­port.

“The theme for the years 2019 and 2020 is “Work­ing To­gether to Pre­vent Sui­cide.” The theme stresses we all have a role to play and to­gether we can col­lec­tively ad­dress the chal­lenges pre­sented by sui­ci­dal be­hav­iour in so­ci­ety to­day.”

The enor­mity of the prob­lem com­bined with the paucity of men­tal health ser­vice has led to the emer­gence of NGOs in the field of sui­cide pre­ven­tion. The NGOs can un­der­take the task of in­form­ing and ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic about the prob­lem of sui­cide through var­i­ous mass me­dia like tele­vi­sion, ra­dio, news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines and the proper and ef­fec­tive use of so­cial me­dia. The hu­mane touch, el­derly ad­vice and pro­fes­sional ap­proach of psy­chol­o­gists and other per­son­nel of Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Call cen­ters can help a lot in pro­vid­ing much needed sup­port to the in­di­vid­u­als with sui­ci­dal ideation.

The Men­tal Health­care Act 2017 de­crim­i­nal­izes the at­tempt to com­mit sui­cide, en­sur­ing ad­e­quate med­ical re­lief to those who at­tempt sui­cide, thus pro­tect­ing them from the harsh af­ter­math but still there is an ur­gent need to de­velop a plan for sui­cide pre­ven­tion both at State and na­tional level in In­dia.

The pri­or­ity ar­eas should in­volve re­duc­ing the avail­abil­ity of and ac­cess to pes­ti­cides, re­duc­ing al­co­hol avail­abil­ity and con­sump­tion, pro­mot­ing re­spon­si­ble me­dia re­port­ing of sui­cide and re­lated is­sues, pro­mot­ing and sup­port­ing NGOs, in­volv­ing re­li­gious lead­ers, im­prov­ing the ca­pac­ity of pri­mary care work­ers and spe­cial­ist men­tal health ser­vices and pro­vid­ing psy­chi­atric eval­u­a­tion and treat­ment to peo­ple who have at­tempted sui­cide, train­ing teach­ers and po­lice of­fi­cers.

The World Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Day was for­mally an­nounced on 10th Sep­tem­ber, 2003. Each year the In­ter­na­tional As­so­ci­a­tion for Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion (IASP) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) uses this day to call at­ten­tion to sui­cide as a lead­ing cause of pre­ma­ture death. The most im­por­tant aim of this ini­tia­tive is rais­ing aware­ness among the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity and the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion that sui­cide is pre­ventable.

The theme for the years 2019 and 2020 is “Work­ing To­gether to Pre­vent Sui­cide.” The theme stresses we all have a role to play and to­gether we can col­lec­tively ad­dress the chal­lenges pre­sented by sui­ci­dal be­hav­iour in so­ci­ety to­day.

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Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion in In­dia re­quires in­te­gra­tive strate­gies that en­com­pass work at the in­di­vid­ual, sys­tems and com­mu­nity level. Join­ing to­gether is crit­i­cal to pre­vent­ing sui­cides in In­dia else it will con­tinue to pose chal­lenge to In­dia of 21^st Cen­tury.