Never say die
By Taru Bahl

Twelve-year-old Pinky committed suicide on August 22 after teachers allegedly beat her for stealing Rs 30 from a fellow student. A 19-year-old resident of Chandigarh, ended his life on November 19 by hanging himself from a tree near his house. A pocket book of poetry was discovered, in which three couplets on unrequited love, were marked as ‘last’. On October 4, a 25-year-old Assistant Manager of a private concern, jumped to her death in Patiala. No suicide note was found. She lived alone and, according to colleagues, suffered from occasional bouts of depression and mood swings. Akash, a factory worker, consumed a bottle of powerful insecticide and died within an hour of downing it. He had three unmarried daughters, huge debts and had lost his wife a few months ago.

ATTEMPTED suicide, according to Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code is punishable by simple imprisonment of up to one year. Abetment of suicide too is a crime according to I.P.C. Sections 305 and 306. Yet, ‘self murder’ cases or instances where the death instinct triumphs over the life instinct, like the ones enumerated above, are on an alarming upswing. These well-thought out-and carefully executed suicide deaths are not necessarily carried out by people who are crazy, mentally sick or schizophrenic. They are people just like you and me, who, at a particular point of time are feeling isolated, despondent, unhappy and defeated. A negative life event like failure in an examination or love affair, loss of job or property, death of a loved one or chronic illness, brings about a situation where the individual feels utterly wretched and worthless. Inflicting deliberate self-harm is then a last-ditch effort to rescue themselves permanently from despair. It could also be a weapon to attract attention/ sympathy or to spite and get even with the person they feel is responsible for the state they find themselves in. Suicides, unfortunately, are fast becoming a natural concomitant of the fast-paced lives we live in. WHO in conjunction with Harvard University and the World Bank estimated in 1997 that each year some 7,86,000 people commit suicide around the world. This amounts to one suicide every 40 seconds.

According to a report released by NIMHANS, suicides are most prevalent amongst the low and high-income groups. Wealth and education are no immunity against it. Which is why Kerala, in spite of being India’s most literate state, is also the country’s suicide capital, registering more than 25,000 suicide deaths in the last three years. So on the one hand you have a mother and her two teenaged daughters in Jamshedpur turning to suicide as salvation, unable to bear the physical pangs of hunger, and on the other hand there is the case of Jaideep Garware, the youngest scion of the Garware business group who lived life in the fast lane. He had everything going for him on the surface and yet was emotionally crippled and alone. He had several houses but no one to share them with, he partied eight days a week with hordes of friends but had no soul mates, he had huge business plans but no one who could repose faith in him and he had a beautiful wife but one who chose to stay away from him. The night he took an overdose of barbiturates, he was partying with his gang till the wee hours of the morning. No one noticed his inner turmoil and disturbed frame of mind. He was a normal rich kid displaying no behavioural, psychological or attitudinal disorders. His friends knew of his estranged marital relations and ascribed his ‘feeling low’ to something that would sort itself out. Could he then have been saved? Should his friends have sensed his distress and reached out to him? Would that have helped him avert his decision and subsequently get the better of his negative feelings?

Research reveals that the majority of individuals, who commit suicide, do not suffer from any diagnosable mental illness, like say depression on schizophrenia. They can be helped. There are crisis intervention centres and rehabilitation wards like Sanjeevani and, Sumaitri in Delhi, which help potential suicide victims to reverse their decisions and thereafter, resume a normal, angst free life. But the moot question is, who will get them to these professional set-ups? Psychologists insist that it is people who are close to you, be it friends, family, peer group, neighbours or colleagues, who have to take warning signals seriously. When someone says, "I am going to commit suicide", you must not brush it aside as some neurotic, crazed expression, intended to emotionally blackmail. Chances are the person is contemplating ways of ending his/her life.

According to Dr Savita Malhotra, Additional Professor, Psychiatry at the PGI and consultant and In-charge of child psychology services, "in Chandigarh we don’t have a separate cell which provides counselling on suicides. However, the number of cases pertaining to mental distress (read that as education stress) especially in the under 15 age group is steadily going up. Excessive parental expectation and the absence of a strong support group, could push the young adolescent to take his/her own life." Savita’s experience has been that although parents are gradually bringing their child’s behavioural and adjustment related problems out of the closest, approaching a psychiatrist is still perceived as a stigma. Even when the child is showing signs of depression and/or hinting at loss of interest in living per se’, parents tend to take it lightly, attributing it to a phase their child will soon outgrow of. In Chandigarh the suicide rate is steadily going up. From 54 in 1997 it went up to 68 in 1998. If statistics are any indication, then more boys than girls commit suicide. For Chandigarh, you have 18 boys out of every 100 and 3 girls out of every 100 committing suicide. Dr Malhotra feels that while boys are more successful in their suicide attempts the girls are not, which is why the discrepancy.

Available indicators point out that for every 10 unsuccessful suicide attempt, there is at least one successful suicide death. According to Sarita, (name changed on request) who slashed her wrists in a desperate effort to make her fiancé’ change his mind about calling off their engagement, "I think most of us at some point in our lives are confronted with this utterly helpless feeling, when logic and optimism take a back-seat. The ability to fight or seek solutions is missing. You feel caved in, trapped, as problems just don’t seem to abate. You want to run away. Since there is no place to go, the only recourse available in that dark hour, is to take your own life. That is something you feel you have the legitimate right to do and since you are not harming another person, there are no guilt feelings. While some mastermind their ‘death wish’ down to the last detail, like Guru Dutt who followed his screen portrayal in Kagaz ke Phool, there are those like me who after an unsuccessful attempt, realise the value of life and of how foolishly we were giving it all up." There are yet others who have honed their suicidal tendencies primarily to diffuse situations. Like a wife taking an overdose of sleeping pills in a pathetic attempt to make her adulterous husband see sense or a teenager banging her head repeatedly against the wall in a bout of hysteria, provoked by a nasty scene with a parent or sibling. Finally there are those who are seriously nursing suicidal thoughts but who at that crucial moment are lucky enough to be attended to, by someone close to them. Someone who helps them tide over the crisis by counselling, talking, listening and reassuring. "At times all you need to do is listen to the person across and reinforce positive feelings. That takes away the loneliness and sense of rejection, especially if it is a temporary suicidal feeling" says Sarita.

Statistics point out that 70 per cent of the people who have killed themselves have talked about it, at times, even discussing the methodology involved. With increasing strife in our lives and the growing incidence of ‘stressed out’ emotionally disturbed people, suicide attempts by those who are down and out or who are going through a rough patch are no longer a rarity. It is another matter that people close to a suicide victim are either ignorant of his/her intentions or are ill-equipped to handle his severe mood swings, thereby failing to respond to what could be a desperate signal for help.

Individual suicides have always had a negative connotation. They are supposed to be attempted by people who are mentally unstable. Even in western society, they remain a taboo subject. There is alienation even in death. In families where a suicide has taken place, the members are viewed with suspicion and hostility. Suicide victims are not buried near other people in the cemetery, for it is regarded as an unforgivable sin. In 1978 when more than 900 followers of Jim Jones died in Guyana after he ordered them to drink cyanide-laced grape punch in what was the worst mass suicide in modern history, none of the cemeteries in the area refused to bury or cremate the bodies. Thanks to the stigma attached to suicide, many of us who contemplate putting an end to our lives, do so without sharing or articulating our plans, not because they are likely to be botched but because we know there is going to be no empathy, understanding and compassion. We are sure that reaching out will only compound our problems. People are going to laugh at us or call us mad and crazy.

According to social scientists, "suicide is the result of man’s various social, economic, religious problems and his relentless struggle against failure to overcome them". Sigmund Freud described it from a psychoanalytical stand-point as an intra-psychic phenomenon, originating primarily from the unconscious, where life and death forces are in constant conflict within the individual". Suicide graphs show two peaks.

The first is seen in late adolescence and early adulthood and the second in old age. While mental illness and suicide could be related, especially in case of major psychotic disorders like paranoia, manic depression, hallucinations or in the case of substance abusers like drugs and alcohol, everyone who commits/attempts suicide is not necessarily mentally ill.

There is no doubt that some of us react more violently to stressful events. We lose focus and the ability to fight, buckling under pressure, allowing the period of gloom to envelope us, obstructing all paths of release. By inflicting harm on our person, indulging in self-destructive acts, we feel we would be able to square up, teach others a lesson, punish them for harming/hurting us. At that moment we are incapable of thinking of the repercussions or of seeing the whole thing in the right perspective. We are on a certain track and are just open to another chain of thought. When Sharad heard from a family doctor that he was an adopted child, he confronted the woman who till that moment he used to call ma. Without waiting for the father to return from an overseas trip, he rushed to the railway track, close to his home to meet his gory end.

Sarita feels that whenever one is plagued with feelings of utter dejection and hopelessness, remember the magic words: "This too shall pass". Today there are no clear perceptible suicide trends, which can help society and the medical fraternity to create a less suicide prone environment. It is no longer unemployment, poverty and ill-health which drive a person to taking his own life. There is increasing loneliness, strife in personal and professional lives and isolation to contend with. It is the support system which has to be strengthened. Sensitivity, empathy, emotional support and, if need be, timely professional intervention can not only stop a person from committing suicide but also ensure that he does not make any future attempts.