It is important that in every locality or neighbourhood, community members ‘encroach upon’ people or families who behave in an odd manner, like not leaving their homes for over a week, not paying bills and so on. Such behaviour indicates that there must be something very wrong with them and those around them need to ‘cross the limit’ and approach such people, ask about their wellbeing and make all efforts to get them to seek professional help.
Also, if anyone notices any behaviour or hears any talk in public places or transport that indicate depression or suicidal tendencies, they should monitor such people, notify authorities and professionals and get help for them. Similarly, if any sudden aggressive or violent behaviour is noticed, like beating up or abusing family members or any exhaustion is noticed among people who are dealing with ill or mentally unstable family members, get immediate help for them, too. The point is that there is need for the community and family members to pay extra attention to all people who are in distress.
There is not much difference between causes and prevention of mass suicides or homicide-cum-suicides and individual suicides. There is need for increased mental health awareness, a suicide prevention policy in every state, and training of field health workers to enable them to identify potential cases. Like the Swachh Bharat Mission, it has to be a mass movement. Common people have to connect to the mission for preventing suicides.
The major role of the governments is to allocate necessary funds for the purpose. Currently, only 2 per cent of the entire health budget is allocated for mental health. Look at it this way: there are far more deaths by suicide than by tuberculosis. But every district has a tuberculosis officer; there is a mass-scale DOTS programme for control and there is a promise by the Indian government to the World Health Organization for total eradication of TB. There is no such passion for mental health issues. There was no special mental health programme taken up by the Central or state governments during the pandemic and now it is seen that there is a 17.9 per cent increase in suicides between 2019 and 2021.
I will repeat that mass-scale awareness is needed on mental health issues. Though dengue deaths are not anywhere close to those by suicides, awareness posters for dengue prevention are put up on every house by government agencies when there is an outbreak. We require similar efforts on mental health issues.
―As told to Sravani Sarkar
The writer is a Mumbai-based psychiatrist and a member of the task force for drafting Madhya Pradesh’s suicide prevention policy.