About a week ago, former Maharashtra ATS Chief and Additional Director General of Police Himanshu Roy committed suicide by shooting himself with his service revolver. He had been diagnosed with cancer and was on medical leave for was on medical leave for the past two years.
VP Sathyan, once a captain of the Indian football team committed suicide in 2006. Every hour at least one student commits suicide in India. Farmers committing suicide in India is a news that we often hear. But what have we done towards stopping the suicides in our country?
There are different reasons why people often feel that suicide is the best way to end their problems. The primary reason being lack of importance given to mental health. When we talk about depression or about being sad, we are often ignored.
Poor mental health and depression is not a disease that affects only people of a particular age group or demographics or financial background. Quite often it comes as a shock when the rich and the famous or the strongest people who are looked upon as leaders of our society often resort to suicide.
The reason why the rate of suicide is increasing today is that mental health is totally ignored. We all live a fast life, but are we hardly prepared for it. Today kids as young as 12 and 13 are in a relationship and think that a break-up or saying no to pre-marital sex will shun them from the society and hence they prefer to commit suicide.
The problem with our society is, we are always taught to be strong but nobody taught us to accept our weaknesses. The moment a child is born we teach them to be strong physically and earn good money. We warn them that failure would mean that society will reject them. Shouldn’t it have been that instead of being physically strong, we teach our children on how to overcome difficulties? What if we taught them how to gracefully accept their weaknesses and fight against them?
The rate of suicide in our country will increase until and unless we don’t tell our future generations that it is OK to be emotional, it is absolutely fine if you are weak in your studies, it’s absolutely fine if you are not an all-rounder or an overachiever. Until and unless our education system does not teach us to be emotional human beings, mental health will suffer.
It is absolutely fine if you are a strong person to the world but you can definitely share your fears with your near and dear ones.