Bangalore continues to be India's suicide capital

Even as Bangalore continues to be the country’s suicide capital, the trend is only likely to increase if a conscious effort is not made to fight the problem, according to leading psychologists in the city. “Children, youngsters, and the society as a whole are becoming increasingly intolerant,” said Anita Gracias of SAHAI, a suicide helpline.

“People do not have the patience to work through a problem, but want instant solutions. Compromise is considered to be a bad word and, more often than not, people are not willing to adjust,” she said. Dr B Madhukar, senior consultant psychiatrist at St Martha’s Hospital, pointed out that there is a need to teach people problem-solving skills and how to deal with emotional problems.

“Even as we are encouraged to succeed and there is a lot of pressure to excel in life, nobody teaches us how to deal with failures,” he said. “There is a life beyond failure, and most people are so caught up in failure that they fail to look beyond that.”  
“Suicide is preventable, if people can only look beyond the ‘hopelessness’ of the situation,” said Dr Sunita Simon, clinical psychiatrist at St John’s Hospital. “Everyone faces some kind of stress or the other but, at a certain point, it becomes a case of the straw breaking the camel’s back,” she said. Fr Divya Paul, HOD, psychology, at the Sampurna Montfort College, seconded the opinion. “When a person begins to think that there is no way out of a situation and no light at the end of the tunnel, they think the only way to get out of a problem is to end one’s life,” he said.
But every problem has a solution. “Nothing warrants the ending of a life, although people are too blinded by the problem to see this,” he added.

Simon said: “After an attempted suicide, people often realise the triviality of the problem. Even if they do not have immediate solutions, they begin to realise that death would have been an end to everything, not just the problems.”