Omnipresent but de-prioritised: Understanding the many faces of mental health and suicide in India
With an alarming estimate of over 1.6 lacs reported suicides in 2021—which is 7.2 per cent above last year’s figure —the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) 2022 report recognises the “ripple effect” that the suicide of an individual has on their family, friends, and community. In addition to the economic stresses of unemployment and financial losses that have been consently represented as the reasons for taking people’s lives, the data actually reports familial issues and illness as the two most prominent reasons for suicide in India. If one were to read the two statements above together, it would not be unobvious to emphasise on the immediacy of suicide prevention.
Buy Now | Our best subscription plan now has a special price
The report is structured in a way that the rates of suicide — which is the incidence of suicides per one lakh population — are simultaneously determined on multiple planes of categorisation: gender, age, social status (married, unmarried, etc.), professional background, and also the informed reasons behind death suicide. These categories overlap to form individual identities and stories of struggle and thus require tailored solutions for problems that are largely systemic.
For instance, a married, female farm labourer in Punjab has different intersectional vulnerabilities than her counterpart in Telangana, and is placed even further apart from an unmarried, male student preparing for exams in a city. To suggest that a common solution can resolve the issue for all three is rather convenient. Efforts need to be made for probing the time and intensity of interventions across an individual’s life course, starting from the early years. The dearth of statics and literature on the “dal risk factors like depression and alcohol-induced premature deaths” is a key issue that needs attention, apart from the urgently addressing global lack of research on suicide prevention.
One of the important themes that the report highlights is the high prevalence of suicides in the age group of 18-30 years tallying close to 35 per cent of deaths, followed 32 per cent of deaths in the age group of 30-45 years. This is a serious concern considering the working population is finding it increasingly difficult to continue living amid the exing socio-economic pressures. Not only is it a reflection of the ailing employment sector, but it may also be hinting at the pervasive presence of work and the career strains that accompany it in our everyday life. It became even more prominent during the last two years of COVID, when the hours of work were mostly undetermined in the precarious work-from-home arrangement. While everyone who didn’t lose their job was bound at home during COVID, it was the women who lost years of freedom not having alternative spaces for breathing where they could get respite from the family. This may explain the staggering statics of more than half the women dying suicides being housewives. Even when the overall ratio of death suicide between men and women is 72.5:27.4, the proportion of female population succumbing to marriage-related issues, especially with respect to dowry, and impotency/infertility continues to be much more than men.
States and UTs like Kerala, Puducherry, and Sikkim, which consently perform well on various national indices of human development also have the highest suicide rates, which is an indication of how a state’s economically-driven development estimates are devoid of any heed to their population’s mental health. To substantiate this claim, the NCRB data also reveals that four megacities — Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai — together account for more than a third of the total suicides in the country. As a consequence, urbanism certainly cannot be expected to vouch for taking better care of its people — the composite suicide rate in cities (16.1) is greater than the national average (12). The persence of high suicide rates in certain states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Madhya Pradesh, over the recent years is an indication that (area-specific) structural factors may also have an incessant effect on an individual’s health, and reversing this will require a national policy coupled with state-sensitive intervention programmes.
The medicalised nature of suicide tends to override its sociocultural embeddedness, and this is why the community’s vital ability to control them is often forgotten. The representation of suicide in popular media is reductive and misleading, only exacerbating the problem. The language used in the mainstream media is also channelled towards misinterpreting suicide as an individual choice rather than being addressed as a systemic issue, inappropriately tagging verbs like “committing” with it. These factors hinder the envelopment of suicide into the discourse and its treatment in public health. The stigma attached to suicide itself coupled with those for depression and mental health, in general, create a vortex of shame and danger, curbing people from sharing what is really bothering them with others.
The problem is structural and so the solutions can only be found in improving the quality of life through evidence-based assance. A recent paper in Lancet Psychiatry, authored several subject matter experts and leaders of civil society, provides a pathway for doing so with detailed recommendations on prioritised interventions at multiple levels of public health. What is also necessary at the moment, is the need for India to have its own National Suicide Prevention Strategy using a multi-stakeholder reach and approach. Until that happens, we can all continue to be blissfully unaware and unaccountable.
(The writer is visiting professor, Delhi University, and founder of ETI)
If you are feeling suicidal or have suicidal thoughts help is at hand- please contact Sneha Suicide Prevention helpline – 044 -2464000 (24 hours)
📣 For more lifestyle news, follow us on Instagram | Twitter | Facebook and don’t miss out on the latest updates!
