Spread awareness about mental health to tackle suicide epidemic

MORE people in India are dying by suicide than anywhere else in the world. The suicide rate per 1,00,000 people in India in 2016 was 16.5 against a global average of 10.5. What drives people to take their own lives? Is the malaise of suicide an individual phenomenon, or should our social, administrative, economic, educational and religious systems step forward and take responsibility for it, too?

Mental illness, drug addiction, divorce, failed love affairs, sexual violence, bankruptcy, academic setbacks, unemployment and poverty are among the primary causes of suicide. Add to it a reason peculiar to South Asian countries: the loss of face in the community.

The reasons behind the high suicide rate in India, specifically in particular sections of society, need to be probed. India has been ranked 126th out of 143 countries in the World Happiness Report 2024; it lies nearly at the bottom, even below the neighbouring Pakistan and Nepal. Why are so many people unhappy in India? Besides the common denominators, there is a peculiar pattern in the suicide graph of India; the rates are particularly high among the youth, low-income groups, farmers and women.

Suicide is responsible for a significant number of deaths among the youth in the age group of 15 to 29 years, who make up 53.7 per cent of the Indian population. The National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) reported in 2020 that over 35 students killed themselves every day. As many as 13 students have taken the extreme step in Kota this year, while 26 had died by suicide in the country’s coaching hub last year. A cut-throat competition, high-performance anxiety and the ever-looming fear of failure, fanned sometimes by anxious parents, can be too much to deal with. There are too many job seekers and very few jobs. About 10 per cent of the Indian youth are jobless, unhappy, anxious and without the resources required to meet their daily needs. Women lag far behind men in employment. Not only are there too few jobs for a large number of candidates, but there is also a lack of fair play and merit-based recruitment, causing heartburn and resentment. The Rajasthan Public Service Commission had to cancel several examinations in the last four years because of litigation over paper leaks and manipulation of results. Other states have been roiled by similar incidents.

People in the lowest income group make up two-thirds of deaths by suicide. Besides, the year 2022 saw 11,290 suicides by farmers and farming labourers. What are the baseline requirements for survival and human happiness? Roti, kapada aur makaan (food, clothing and shelter)? The average monthly buying power of 50 per cent of Indians is Rs 3,094 and Rs 4,963 in rural and urban areas, respectively, according to the NITI Aayog. Those falling in the bottom 20 per cent of the rural and urban populations have a daily spending capacity of Rs 70-100 to sustain themselves and their families. This money does not fulfil the needs of food, clothing and shelter by any stretch of the imagination.

For every death by suicide, there are more than 200 persons with suicidal tendencies and thoughts. Alarmingly, Indian women have twice the suicide rate compared with the global average. An average of 86 rape cases were registered in 2021 every day, according to NCRB data. This may only be the tip of the iceberg, as a high number of cases remain unreported because of a victim’s sense of shame and fear of stigma. A large percentage of women is subjected to physical and mental abuse, deprivation and oppression, with little hope of redressal from a law and order system plagued by corruption.

Disenchanted with farming and exposed to the dazzling allure of urban life, the rural youth look for an escape, leading to large-scale migrations to big cities. Urbanisation adds to the stress — high costs of living, fast pace of life and the struggle to succeed and find a foothold in the world. There is a breakdown of the security net of family and community. And it causes a sense of insecurity and inadequacy. Many who fail are stuck — they do not want to return to the village, but the city doesn’t support them either.

There is something seriously amiss with our education system. According to Economic Survey 2023-24, only about 51.25 per cent of the youth are deemed employable. It means that one in two young people are not yet ready for the workforce straight out of college. Even though enrolment in higher education has grown, most students lack critical thinking, perseverance, etc. Addiction, violence, crime, depression and suicides are often the most predictable impacts of hopelessness and despair caused by unemployment.

Social media gives people struggling to subsist on less than Rs 100 a day a peep into the tinsel world of the richie-rich, leading them to aspire for swanky cars and expensive phones. Aspirations are rising, but jobs and opportunities remain scarce. The yawning gap between aspirations and the grim reality can be too much for the human brain to take. In a country where the richest 1 per cent own over 40 per cent of the wealth while the bottom half share just a dismal 3 per cent of the total, the staggering inequality and lack of equality in access to resources are evident.

There is an urgent need to find remedies to deal with the suicide epidemic in India, and it does not lie in cosmetic steps like installing lightweight fans in student hostels, keeping a strict check on the sale of pesticides and patrolling lakes. Nothing less than multi-dimensional and genuine efforts to fix the faults in our system will save precious lives. In a country where a significant number of people still try to cure their health problems through home remedies, the chances of a person with mental health issues consulting a psychiatrist are low.

A lack of awareness about mental health issues, deficient medical services and tremendous social stigma attached to such problems have put us at a disadvantage. Addressing these issues might be the first step in suicide intervention, which can be followed by focusing on concerns of the most vulnerable groups.