Spotting signs of distress is the best way to prevent suicides

According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Bangalore has the highest suicide rates of 38.1 per one lakh people, whereas the national average is 10.9 per lakh people.

While this is alarming in itself, what is even more alarming is the age of people committing suicide is younger and the reasons are getting even more trivial.

Dr B Madhukar, a senior consultant psychiatrist at St Marthas Hospital, said, “At least 30% of the total suicides are committed by children, under the age of 16. There are children as young as 10 and 12 years old who contemplate and even attempt suicide.”
Anita Gracias, counsellor at SAHAI, a suicide prevention helpline, explained that children today have too much information that they are unable to process because their mental capabilities are not yet completely formed. 

The media too has a role to play when it comes to prevalence of suicidal tendencies among children. “The media glorifies suicides without complementing it with solutions. They may show how a child planned and plotted his or her death down to the last detail- but they do not show how this can be prevented or what could have been differently,” she said.

Dr Divya Paul, HOD of psychology department at Sampurna montfort College explained, “While the media glorifies instant gratification, there is not much emphasis given to hard work and perseverance. Our transition as a culture and society is one of the leading causes of suicide. People are constantly looking for an easy way out of their miseries, even as they are looking for shortcuts to success.”

Despite all the reasons and different theories, what everybody agrees to is that nobody wants o actually die. “Suicide is an act of desperation,” pointed out Dr Divya Paul. “The drive to live is very strong in all of us. More often than not, a person who contemplates suicide does not want to live. But that does not necessarily mean he wants to die either,” he said. 

He added that it is often a cry for help and this perhaps explains why people brood and tend to talk about death and dying, perhaps hoping that someone will listen and help.”