Is there a rise in the suicides due to COVID-19 lockdown?
The News Timeline nowadays:
1) A man dies by suicide as he was missing his wife.
2) A Priest from Udupi dies by suicide in Mumbai.
3) A student from TN dies by suicide.
4) A doctor dies by suicide and pens a heartfelt note.
What are all these? Has the whole plethora of pandemic created so much anxiety in people’s mind that they are opting this? Well, according to news reports and statistics, the reasons can be grouped under stages:
— During the initial days of lockdown, the reasons recorded were people in fear of coronavirus, people who thought they had it and other groups who were ostracised by their friends or relatives if they were suffering from the disease.
— Initial 10-20 days saw alcohol/drugs withdrawal as the main reason.
— The panic created amongst the people due to constant fear was also one of the causes, but it has now subsequently settled.
— Constant fear leads to panic and the root cause is a wrong message or misinformation given around us.
— Nowadays, suicide can be accredited to the financial problems people are facing or due to unemployment, lack of resources is there.
Suicide Myths
1. First and foremost is that a person is talking about suicide- he won’t be a victim of suicide.
2. You can’t label a person as suicidal as if it is a personality trait.
3. The third myth is talking to a person or asking him if he/she is suicidal.
4. The other myth is that if a person dies of suicide, people tend to label him/her as having a mental illness. A lot of suicide cases in India are undiagnosable.
Suicides Are Preventable
A message that should be doing the rounds is that suicides are preventable. Interventions should be done to prevent this fatalism at the policy level.