Dr. Raminder Jit Singh
“The foolish rush to end their lives.
Only the steadfast soul survives.”
Christine de Pizan
‘Teenager commits Suicide’, ‘Young Girl Commits Suicide’ you sift through pages of newspapers & would find such news headlines. The scale of the problem of suicides among India’s young people is huge. According to a recent World Health Organization report, India has the highest suicide rate in the world for the 15-to-29 age group.
In a rapidly developing India, teenagers experience strong feelings of stress, confusion, self-doubt, pressure to succeed, financial uncertainty, and other fears while growing up. For some teens, suicide may appear to be a solution to their problems and stress.
According to the latest report on statistics available on the ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India’ published by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of Ministry of Home Affairs, Govt. of India, in the year 2014, in the age group 14 – 18, 9230 young lives were lost owing to suicides. Among the 9230, 4682 were male and 4548 were female. Exam stress and depression are the major causative factors behind increasing teenage suicides in India. More teenagers die of suicide than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, obesity, birth defects and lung disease. Every 90 minutes a teenager tries to commit suicide in India. Many of these attempts are half-hearted cries for attention, help and love. But every six hours, one succeeds.
Depression and suicidal feelings are treatable mental disorders. The teenager needs to have his or her illness diagnosed, and appropriate treatment option developed. When parents are in doubt whether their child has a serious mental health problem, a psychiatric examination can be very helpful. Many of the symptoms of suicidal feelings are similar to those of depression.
Parents should be aware of the following signs of teenagers who may try to kill themselves:
* Change in eating and sleeping habits
* Withdrawal from friends, family, and society.
* Feeling of rage or uncontrolled anger or seeking revenge.
* Drug and alcohol use.
* Unusual neglect of personal appearance.
* Persistent boredom, difficulty concentrating, or a decline in the quality of schoolwork
* Frequent complaints about physical symptoms, often related to emotions, such as headaches, fatigue, etc.
* Loss of interest in pleasure activities.
* Complain of being a bad person.
* Talking about wanting to hurt or kill one-self.
* Become suddenly cheerful after a period of depression.
* Experiencing dramatic mood changes.
Being a parent, if you notice any one of the above mentioned symptoms in your kid it’s time to seek help as soon as possible by contacting mental health professional.
In Educational Institutions, the counseling staff should be trained to recognize the students with early symptoms of depression. The students who exhibit such signs should be properly counseled or referred to mental health professionals.
Now -a-days in urban India diminishing traditional family support system, leave teenagers coping with pressure to perform vulnerable to suicidal behavior. A teenager with suicidal tendency needs someone in whom he could confide and off-load some of his apprehensions and problems. If he or she finds someone who listens to him, his suicidal tendencies diminish to large extent. The enormity of the problem combined with the paucity of mental health service has led to the emergence of NGOs in the field of suicide prevention. The NGO’s through their suicide prevention can help a lot in providing much needed support to the teenagers with suicidal ideation.
In order to control menace of teenage suicides in India, three main components of modern society, i.e., Government, NGO’s and civil society, must work systematically and in an organized, planned and in a co-ordinated way to control, negate and eliminate this highly undesirable act. Bold initiatives and continuous efforts by government as well as by non-governmental organizations must be jointly oriented towards making suicide free society. These efforts need to be institutionalized in order to make these more effective, contextual, purposeful and productive in stopping the acts of suicides. With support from family and professional mental health treatment, teenagers who are suicidal can recover and return to become healthy world citizens.
(The author is founder of Registered Suicide Prevention Organisation ‘The-SARA’)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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