Suicide is an unfortunate event and the most appropriate word to describe the event is the word “trap” because most people who commit it or attempt one are actually at a loss because of the lack of a simple medical health service called psychological counselling notwithstanding the fact that all cases may not be preventable, but still, the data show that there are trends indicating some possible conclusions.
As per NCRB data, a lot of young people are committing suicide because of varying reasons and the majority of them include the categories called “family problems” and “illnesses” put together account for more than 50 percent, surprisingly in around 9 percent of cases the causes are not known.
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The rate has steadily increased since 2017 from 9 percent to 12 percent in 2021 compared to previous years, and what is worrying is amongst the 1.6 lakh odd people committing suicide more than 50 percent are due to seemingly preventable causes like “family problems” (which can be dealt with by expert family counsellors qualified for the same) the other major group called “illnesses” could be dealt by the health system (the fact that the deaths in the group have been increasing shows poorly of the health system as a whole).
In around 9 percent cases, the causes are unknown, which is shocking because it shows that every year around 15 thousand people in this country are killing themselves due to causes unknown to the people around them. Just like the darkness about whether the Covid pandemic could have contributed to this rise directly or indirectly.
Covid has definitely not improved the situation for the country in this matter and in fact, has exposed these deficiencies, as it is well known that suicide prevention comes under the ambit of mental health care, the glaring deficiency in either the national mental health policy or its implementation has to be brought into enquiry in this matter.
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Not going too far if one goes to the nearest government Heath center one can find that the whole district might have very less mental health professionals or none at all and the ones which exist in the name of national institutes or medical colleges are sparsely distributed in the country and are not enough or not simply accessed at all.
The mental health situation has been worsening but without any respite especially for the poor who due to lack of awareness and secondly due to the stigma and harassment associated with the disease, don’t access the mental health care facility early enough and in the process happily attribute the suicide to family problems and failed love affairs etc and forget about it.
Lack of knowledge about the available interventions after early detection of the warning signs could definitely prevent them from taking such drastic steps because getting trapped in the situation of lack of awareness amongst the near relatives around such vulnerable and ill people who need help is further compounded by the blind beliefs like going to the local godmen and shamans, in the hope that they will drive away unholy spirits and will restore sleep and appetite and solve family problems, whereas it only makes it worse because of the economic drain and unprofessional handling of the disease, because of unprofessional disservice done by such unscientific people who claim to solve these problems the burden of disease becomes unmanageable.
As if the above situation is not enough any mental illnesses are further compounded because of medical illnesses like undiagnosed diabetes and other nutrition-related diseases for which our country is also very infamous, evident in the form of indicators like child malnutrition rate, infant mortality, very high diabetes and anaemia rate in pregnancy.
Such hidden undiagnosed and neglected diseases(complicated by the intervention by godmen or babas) make mentally challenged people more irritated and the common daily problems seem insurmountable for themselves, whereas for the people around them, such irritable people may seem unreasonable or lacking in better outlook towards life, whereas their irritation towards family members turning into “family problems” may actually be due to nutritional problems or hidden undiagnosed illnesses.
To further make the situation worse even after such people manage to go to the mental health care provider as a last resort after losing money and much valuable time lost in the company of unprofessional people, they still run the risk of severe side effects of the medicines because the quality of the same is not any better than the other medicines which frequently kill even small children inside and outside the country due poor quality control measures in the Pharma industry of the country, doubly so for the psychiatric medicines because many have narrow therapeutic range meaning excessive dose variation because of poor quality of production may even put the patient’s life at risk even with the correct medication.
In the middle of all this getting hooked to other addictive substances like alcohol or other banned substances is very likely(especially on the advice of such babas) and that itself puts the person on road to suicide risk much more than what might be the initial family and then economic problems, especially so after the Covid pandemic and hence the term “Covidicide”.
There’s no doubt that the actual number of people suffering from these preventable conditions of “family problems” then “economic problems” and then lack of easy access to mental health care and finally landing in the vicious trap are much higher than the actual numbers mentioned in the NCRB data and especially after the pandemic.
Lack of debate on these aspects and meek surrender to such glaring defects only shows how insensitive we are as a society to the problems lurking around us and the world seems to be going ahead as if the onus for these problems rests with those who have died rather than those who are alive.
It is tragic that many will succumb to the same kind “Covidicide” in future too but nothing much is going to change, same as almost nothing has been learnt from the pandemic itself except some increase in religious bigotry thanks to the so-called mainstream media.
The mainstream media being part of the corporate which has enriched itself in the pandemic also has increased the risk of “covidicide” for the rest of low socioeconomic strata because of its unethicality of seeking profits over showing the truth to correct the defects.
So one shouldn’t be surprised at videos showing temple priests kicking and shoeing away mentally ill people because they tried to touch an idol of god in the belief that it might cure them, that too right in the middle of a metro city like Bengaluru which is also famous for NIMHANS the national institute for mental health and neurosciences.