Union Health Ministry rolls out country’s first suicide prevention policy

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has announced a National Suicide Prevention Strategy, the first of its kind in the country to achieve a reduction in suicide mortality by 10% by 2030.

The National Suicide Prevention Strategy:

• The strategy is in line with the WHO’s South East-Asia Region Strategy for suicide prevention.
• Aim: The strategy broadly seeks to establish:
  • Effective surveillance mechanisms for suicide within the next three years.
  • Toestablish psychiatric outpatient departments that will provide suicide prevention services through the District Mental Health Programme in all districts within the next five years, and
  • To integrate a mental well-being curriculum in all educational institutions within the next eight years.
• It envisages developing guidelines for:
  • responsible media reporting of suicides, and
  • restricting access to means of suicide with time-bound action plans and
  • multi-sectoral collaborations.
• The stress is on developing community resilience and societal support for suicide prevention.

Suicide rates in India:

• According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report 2021, the Suicide rate in India is increasing alarmingly.
• Delhi has recorded the highest number of (2,840) suicides.
• Reasons for Suicide:
  • 2%: Family Problems (other than marriage-related problems)
  • 8%: Marriage Related Problems
  • 6%: Illness
• Daily wage earners accounted for 42,004 (25.6 per cent) of the total victims. One in four of the recorded 1, 64,033 suicide victims during 2021 was a daily wage earner.
• They were followed by self-employed people, unemployed people, and those involved in the farming sector were the top categories of people who died by suicide in 2021.
• The report certainly points out suicides as a critical public health issue in India and qualifies for a closer epidemiological assessment.
  

How is Suicide a Social Problem?

• Suicide is a serious social problem whose incidence varies between genders, age groups, geographical distribution, and the influence of the socio-political structure of society.
• Furthermore, suicide should be viewed as a multidimensional public and mental health issue, having complex interactions with the economic, social, cultural, psychological, and biological realms of individual and collective existence.

What are the challenges?

• Under-reporting of such cases due to fear of social stigma and sometimes to rescue from judicial procedures.

• Fear of legal action:  Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) makes The fear of punitive action and added hassle of having to deal with police and courts often ‘Suicide a punishable offence’, results in a refusal to seek help.
• Social stigma:The social stigma associated with suicide results in the NCRB grossly under-reporting the true numbers of suicide. 
  

  Related Initiatives: Mental Healthcare Act, 2017 KIRAN Manodarpan Initiative