Preventing suicides in Central Para-military forces

 

Psychologists and psychiatrists may have their own technical and considered professional views as to why a person commits suicide, the general feeling, however, is ”having got fed up” and losing the enduring capacity to face stark and trying moments in life. There could be nothing as valuable and with no substitute as one’s life. People of all hues, categories, gender, economic status, age groups and the like unfortunately commit suicide and bid farewell to this world sending waves of trauma and shock to nears and dears. That, nearly 150 personnel of our para-military forces (PMFs) commit suicide every year mostly when on duty, is quite unfortunate and a cause of great concern and must be addressed seriously by employing all measures including counselling, encouraging meditation, yoga and providing access to entertainment, fun and frolic. However, the general causes are acute stress, depression and frustration etc emanating due to monotony of the nature of job, performing duties under most challenging and taxing circumstances, less of rest and sleep, denial of leave for going home/home sickness, family problems and even spur of the moment imbalances in the harmonic equations. It is commendable that Union Home Ministry has set up a task force to identify the ”relevant risks” and protective factors at individual levels. More of research in areas of vulnerability and nature of incidents and other factors needed to be undertaken by the task force which must comprise experts from medical fields too. The study must be broad based but we would suggest to have more of counselling work-shops conducted to implant optimism, hope, high endurance levels and cheering up attitude in the PMFs