Editorial: Still Blind on Suicides

When the suicide-rate spikes in the Vidarbha region of Maharastra or in southern Andhra Pradesh, the reasons are known – crop failure and mounting debt. When teen suicides climb in June-July, across the country every year, experts know the reason, they blame the board exam results and academic pressure. Across the country and the world, the reasons prompting suicides are understood in reasonable detail and it naturally follows that efforts are mounted to suppress the triggers. The massive crores released to waive farmer loans, the grading system introduced for board exam results and the no failures in schools polices emerged as corrective measures undertaken to curb suicides in the country. Suicides remain a worry in Sikkim and informed corrective measures cannot even been speculated upon because no enquiry has been invested into understanding why so many in Sikkim take their own lives. It does not take an expert to inform us that suicides are born from depression; that much is obvious. Everyone knows that untreated depression festers to manic levels triggering suicidal tendencies. We know that. What we do not know is what triggers are pushing an 10 year old to such levels of depression that he commits suicide after returning from school on a weekend, using his school tie as a noose. A suicide always makes disturbing news and the psychological health of a State dregs low when a State as small as Sikkim reports up to 5 suicides on the same day sometimes. If official records can be taken seriously, the suicide pattern is already changing in Sikkim. The number of suicides by senior citizens has noticeably fallen even as suicides by the very young [pre-teens and teens], as also victims in their thirties, are registering disturbingly high numbers. It is no longer enough to be told that psychiatric counselling needs to be reached to more people at more places. That should already have 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.