Editorial:Suicides, Still Unaddressed

For a state having to live with the notoriety of having the highest suicide rate in the country, Sikkim manages to shrug off its responsibility towards saving lives surprisingly effectively. Death, due to any reason, is a very personal loss. But even while accepting that the norms of privacy require such losses to be mourned in private, when the loss of life is due to suicide which has reached as alarming levels as they have in Sikkim, one hopes that better trained minds and more involved [and responsible] people measure up to the challenge and study the incidents in more detail. Their enquiry, should it offer a clear explanation, will also point out the course corrections the society needs to adopt to save lives. This is not happening, and the real danger is that given Sikkim’s small size, even a slight dip in the number of reported suicides will see it drop from the top of the suicide rate list. When that happens, chances are that everyone will heave a faked sigh of relief that the menace has been curbed. But that would not be the case, because, unless clearly and effectively addressed, suicides will remain a very worrying reality irrespective of where Sikkim ranks on the national suicide list. The shock therapy of having becoming the suicide capital of the nation did not shake things up in the regard, and now comes news of a 9-year-old having taken his own life in South Sikkim. If even this shock, coming as it does in the wake of a disturbing number of teenagers having taken the same course, does not catalyse mediation, nothing will.
Everyone knows that untreated depression festers into manic levels, triggering suicidal tendencies. We know that. What we do not know is what triggers are pushing a 9 year old, or teenagers for that matter, to such levels of depression that they are committing suicide in what should be the most carefree age. It is not defence that teen or preteen suicides are rare [the last instance of a preteen committing suicide in Sikkim was in 2009 when an 11-year-old girl hanged herself with a school tie one afternoon after returning from school]. A suicide always makes disturbing news and the psychological health of a State dregs low when a State as small as Sikkim adds ever younger people to the list of victims. It does not take an expert to explain that suicides are born from depression, that much is obvious. It is no longer enough to be told that psychiatric counselling needs to be reached to more people at more places. That should have already happened by now. Awareness camps will no longer suffice, the concerned agency should start investing more of its training in trying to understand and explain why depression is so pervasive in Sikkim and where Sikkim is failing, as a State and as a society, in trying to contain depression from turning morbid and fatal. When the suicide-rate spikes in the Vidarbha region of Maharastra or in Andhra Pradesh, the reasons are known – crop failure. When teen suicides climb in June-July across the country every year, experts know the reason, they blame the board exam results and academic pressures. Across the country and the world, the reasons prompting suicides are understood in reasonably clear detail and it naturally follows that efforts are mounted to suppress the triggers. No such enquiry has been invested to understand why so many in Sikkim end their lives. The times are now desperate for a detailed analysis to be undertaken.