Every year thousands of youths follow the route of suicide. The problem of suicides of young people in India is little mystery. The numerous reports from the National Crime Records Bureau and independent investigations of mortality show that suicide is a leading cause of death in youths. According to the latest government data, there is an approximation of 60,000 deaths of youths each year; with independent studies showing that these data underestimate up to a third of youth suicides by misclassifying them as accidentsthe true figure may even up to 1,00,000 a year.
The recent case of suicides of three young women students in a medical college in Tamil Nadu has mentioned the awful conditions in their institution add to the increasing number of suicides among young Indians in the past year. Consider few examples that have hit our headlines: the suicide attempts by four female athletes in a sports facility in Kerala; the 29 suicides of youth preparing for national entrance exams in coaching institutions in Kota; the suicide of Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad; and the most recent loss of Saira Sirohi, a national-level swim mer, in Ghaziabad.
Each of these events has been studied separately and in detail with commentators emphasising the relationship of the deaths of these youths to the particular social issues they found themselves facing with such as from caste-based oppression and gender discrimination to the pressures of academic performance etc. In the noise that has surrounded each of these tragedies, with the predictable hysteria in TV news debates and the slugfest between rival ideological camps, one common thread running through all of these suicides is the loss of hope in the young educated victims trapped in a system that had failed them.
The reason behind suicide of youths globally in this period is because this is the phase of life which is characterised by rash behaviours, is associated with dramatic changes in one’s self-image and objectives, and is when some of the most important life decisions related to education and relationships are made. This is the reason why suicide attempts in youth, unlike suicide in older adults, are often impulsive triggered by severe disappointments like poor examination result or the loss of a romantic relationship. In some cases, there is a history of a longer-term period of social issues causing a clinical depression. A research has shown that the major zones of youth suicide are in the most developed states of India, like in the south of the country. One of the key reasons for this is the increasing gap between the ambitions of educated youth, such as to freely choose their life partner or live a life free of social biases, and the reality of a tough, inflexible, and uncertain society in which they find themselves struggling
The suicide was impulsive or well-planned is the secondary matter, one thing is for certainno one tries to end their lives unless they become hopeless for their future. Many other countries have started to work in this direction and implemented a range of interventions which target not only the social conditions that trigger the hopelessness that leads to suicidal activities, but also the more immediate individual interventions to encourage youths to recover their hope to live.
Despite the evidence testifying to the huge toll of suicide in our youths and the knowledge of effective interventions to prevent suicide, there remains no coordinated effort to address suicide as a public health issue in India. Thus there is no need to surprise that the suicide rates of youths in India are among the highest in the world and in this regard, our response to these tragedies is similar to that of suicides in other groups in our society. This is no better demonstration than by the discourse on farmer suicides being viewed almost completely through a socio-political lens. Similarly, the response to the heart-breaking suicides of the parents of a young child who had died because of dengue in New Delhi in September 2015 highlights the actions of the hospitals which denied treatment of the dying child. There was no attention to the fact that the suicide of the parents might have been prevented with suitable counselling. It appears that our gut response to each suicide tragedy, not least in our news media, is to hold someone responsible for the social aspects that trigger the loss of hope. Sadly, we never question whether the suicide might have been prevented had there been supporting environments for the recovery of hope and what lessons we may learn to prevent further suicides.
A question arises here that if social elements play such a major role in understanding suicidal behaviour, why should we emphasis on interventions targeting individuals? Some says that this may even divert attention from the social factors that must at last be held responsible for all suicides. The reason is that most youths who are exposed to the same social factors do not lose hope and, if they do, they do not try to end their lives. The huge majority of youths in the same institutions of Kota or in the decrepit medical college in Tamil Nadu survive their ordeal and move on. Self-harm behaviour is a relatively rare outcome of a unique confluence of factors in a person, both social and related to psychological well-being, and we must aim both of these to prevent suicides.
There should be an open dialogue to challenge the stigma surrounding mental health; the development of life skills in schools to strengthen emotional regulation, which can help build resilience to overcome with the phases of loss of hope that are expected in the transition from childhood to adulthood; parenting interventions to minimise the pressures on youths to perform academically and to choose their intimate partner; ensuring freedom from violence, gender discrimination, and social rejection of young people, not least in campuses; a campaign to make sure the safe storage of pesticides, the most commonly used method for suicide; and easy contact to trained personnel to deliver psychological treatments in educational institutions and health-care facilities.
The Indian Constitution has provided the opportunity for an expansive expression of basic rights after its adoption. It has moved to an interpretative practice that supports the spirit of the fundamental rights to life, liberty and equality with dignity, among others. There is little confusion that it has provided the framework for the declaration of fundamental rights mainly against not only the state, but also private sectors, providing the standard of constitutional principles that must in all cases defeat public, including religious, morality. This is especially critical where the latter is found to carry out stigmatised identities that reduce the dignity of persons and dominate them in countless ways.