Shereen Ali

Every year in T&T, more than 100 peo­ple kill them­selves–usu­al­ly by hang­ing, drink­ing weed­i­cides, or shoot­ing them­selves with a gun. And while some sui­cides may be planned, many oth­ers hap­pen as im­pulse ac­tions when an in­di­vid­ual is faced with fam­i­ly or re­la­tion­ship trau­mas be­yond their cur­rent abil­i­ty to cope, says one sui­cide hot­line work­er.

Al­though there may be oth­er rea­sons, he said re­la­tion­ships gone wrong are a ma­jor trig­ger. Peo­ple who feel there's no form of help avail­able, in a mo­ment of de­spair, frus­tra­tion or de­pres­sion, may grab up any eas­i­ly avail­able means around them to end the pain of liv­ing.

Be­tween 2005 and 2012, some 727 peo­ple of­fi­cial­ly died by sui­cide in T&T, ac­cord­ing to re­porter Su­san Mo­hammed (Ex­press, Sep 16, 2014). That's rough­ly about 100 a year. The re­al an­nu­al fig­ure is prob­a­bly much high­er as many deaths may not be re­port­ed as sui­cides.

Health Min­istry fig­ures re­leased in 2012 show a marked in­crease in the num­ber of re­port­ed sui­cides, with an av­er­age of 1,000 ad­mis­sions an­nu­al­ly re­lat­ed to self-harm or sui­cide at the Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ties.

For every sin­gle sui­cide, there are 20 oth­ers who have tried, es­ti­mates the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO).

And it's not just adults; teenagers and youth, too, are killing them­selves. WHO re­search shows that world­wide, sui­cide is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death in 15 to 29-year-olds. In T&T, Re­porter Dar­cel Choy, in a No­vem­ber 2012 News­day ar­ti­cle, re­port­ed that teen sui­cide was in­creas­ing. She re­port­ed that in 2012, 14 per cent of stu­dents aged 13 to 16 made a sui­cide at­tempt and 17 per cent had se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered the op­tion of sui­cide, ac­cord­ing to a Glob­al School Based Stu­dent Health Sur­vey. Source of these fig­ures was Michael Mc­Far­lane, di­rec­tor of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Ser­vices at the Flori­da Na­tion­al Guard, who cit­ed the fig­ures at a press con­fer­ence for an Ado­les­cent Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Sem­i­nar at UWI.

Al­though in the past half-cen­tu­ry, many coun­tries have de­crim­i­nalised sui­cide, mak­ing it eas­i­er for those think­ing about it to seek help, in T&T it is still a crim­i­nal of­fense.

In No­vem­ber 2012, in re­ac­tion to Wayne Kublals­ingh's first protest fast, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, Anand Ram­lo­gan, in re­sponse to Se­nior Coun­sel Dana See­ta­hal's state­ment that ac­tivist Wayne Kublals­ingh could be charged un­der com­mon law with at­tempt­ed sui­cide, said: "It would ap­pear that See­ta­hal's opin­ion is cor­rect, sui­cide and at­tempt­ed sui­cide are crim­i­nal of­fences. I am not aware, how­ev­er that any­one has ever been charged un­der com­mon law with the of­fence of at­tempt­ed sui­cide." (Ex­press, No­vem­ber 22, 2012)

The fact that it is still crim­i­nal, though, means peo­ple feel stig­ma­tised and are re­luc­tant to seek help.

Ac­cord­ing to the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WHO) in its Sep­tem­ber 2014 re­port on sui­cide–its first on this top­ic–sui­cide is not just a pri­vate is­sue; it is very much a pub­lic health is­sue, be­cause more than 800,000 peo­ple die by sui­cide glob­al­ly every year, with dev­as­tat­ing im­pacts on fam­i­ly, friends and com­mu­ni­ties.

Be­cause taboo and stig­ma per­sist, peo­ple of­ten do not seek help or are left alone, said Dr Mar­garet Chan, the WHO's Di­rec­tor-Gen­er­al, in the re­port.

She called for a mul­ti-sec­toral ap­proach to help pre­vent such trag­ic loss.

Part of that ap­proach, the WHO re­port says, in­volves cre­at­ing a na­tion­al sui­cide pre­ven­tion strat­e­gy, which can in­clude re­strict­ing means, re­duc­ing stig­ma, and train­ing health work­ers, ed­u­ca­tors, po­lice and oth­er gate­keep­ers. Sui­cide, says the WHO, is pre­ventable.

One body help­ing with lo­cal sui­cide pre­ven­tion train­ing in T&T is the Catholic Re­li­gious Ed­u­ca­tion­al De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Cre­di), a Catholic in­sti­tu­tion which of­fers cours­es in ed­u­ca­tion, the­ol­o­gy and mu­sic.

Cre­di re­cent­ly in­vit­ed UK so­cial wel­fare ex­pert Nick Barnes to hold one-day sui­cide in­ter­ven­tion cours­es (with cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and ac­cred­i­ta­tion by City & Guilds of Lon­don, UK) for lo­cal pris­ons of­fi­cers, pro­ba­tion of­fi­cers, first re­spon­ders and in­sti­tu­tion­al care staff.

The course is part of Cre­di's mis­sion to of­fer cours­es in ar­eas of need, said Wendy Imamshah, man­ag­er of Cre­di's pro­grammes for In­te­gral Hu­man De­vel­op­ment.

"Our whole fo­cus in of­fer­ing cours­es like this–we've done ones on youth trau­ma, too–is in­te­gral hu­man de­vel­op­ment. We try to de­vel­op the en­tire per­son, not just their aca­d­e­mics...This par­tic­u­lar pro­gramme...came out of see­ing what is hap­pen­ing in the schools; we re­alised that chil­dren are prone...imag­ine a child com­mit­ting sui­cide on the day be­fore SEA!" said Imamshah, who com­ment­ed there was a dire short­age of guid­ance coun­sel­lors in schools.

So al­though T&T does not have a na­tion­al sui­cide strat­e­gy yet, some steps are be­ing tak­en. Said one prison of­fi­cer af­ter the De­cem­ber course:

"I re­al­ly learned a lot, es­pe­cial­ly how to iden­ti­fy some of the signs of those at risk for sui­cide; be­cause you can't help them un­less you can iden­ti­fy the risks and signs... and I learned that in­ter­ven­tion can help."

"There is a dis­joint, a lack of co­or­di­na­tion among our dif­fer­ent ser­vice de­part­ments, eg Po­lice Ser­vice, Pris­ons, So­cial Wel­fare...Every­body does things in their own lit­tle pock­ets."

Com­ment­ed an­oth­er prison of­fi­cer: "It would be nice if we could have a con­ver­sa­tion with pol­i­cy­mak­ers, to work out a pol­i­cy or a sys­tem of how to deal with sui­cide is­sues...When things hap­pen to some­one–for in­stance, you lose your job, your hus­band or wife leaves you, or you are de­pressed and see no hope–where do you go?"

TO­MOR­ROW: Train­er Nick Barnes talks about how to help peo­ple at risk for sui­cide

more in­fo

?Vi­tal glob­al trends from WHO

'Pre­vent­ing Sui­cide–A Glob­al Im­per­a­tive'

High­lights of the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion's first sui­cide re­port, pub­lished Sept 4, 2014

�2 Every year, more than 800,000 peo­ple kill them­selves. In 2012, there were 804,000 sui­cide deaths; a rate of 11.4 per 100,000 pop­u­la­tion

�2 This rate is un­der-re­port­ed; many sui­cides die un­count­ed. For each sui­cide, there may be 20 who have tried

�2 Glob­al­ly, sui­cides ac­count for 50 per cent of all vi­o­lent deaths in men, and 71 per cent in women

�2 Sui­cide rates are high­est for peo­ple aged 70 and over

�2 Glob­al­ly, sui­cide is the sec­ond lead­ing cause of death in 15-29-year-olds

�2 In­ges­tion of pes­ti­cide, hang­ing and firearms are among the most com­mon meth­ods of sui­cide glob­al­ly.

�2 75 per cent of glob­al sui­cides oc­curred in low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries in 2012

�2 Re­strict­ing ac­cess to means helps pre­vent sui­cide (2014 WHO sui­cide re­port)

Some risk fac­tors for sui­cide

�2 Abuse, vi­o­lence, or re­la­tion­ships of con­flict

�2 Dif­fi­cul­ties in ac­cess­ing, re­ceiv­ing health care

�2 Eas­i­ly avail­able means

�2 Stig­ma against peo­ple who seek help for sui­ci­dal be­hav­iours, men­tal health prob­lems and sub­stance abuse prob­lems

�2 Iso­la­tion

�2 For in­di­vid­u­als: men­tal dis­or­ders, al­co­hol, fi­nan­cial loss, chron­ic pain, a fam­i­ly his­to­ry of sui­cide, any pre­vi­ous sui­cide at­tempt (2014 WHO sui­cide re­port)