Halt the march

Checking suicides



Not just infectious diseases cause epidemics. Even catchy ideas and behaviors do, sometimes to devastating effects. In his bestselling book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses the harrowing trend of teen suicide in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, the teen suicide rate of Micronesia was ten times higher than the world average. “Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug,” writes Gladwell in his official blog, “and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances.” The spread of teen suicide in Micronesia was a case of transmission of a destructive behavior on a mass scale. This is the reason that recent government data on suicide rates in Nepal is so alarming.



There were 348 reported cases of suicide in Nepal in 2011; 44 percent of the victims were from 15-29 age group and 29 percent from 30-44 age group. Hanging and poisoning were reported as the most common methods of ending one’s life. If past studies of socio-cultural trends like the one on teen suicide in Micronesia are any guide, as Nepalis witness a growing number of their brethren cut their own lives short, still more Nepalis, particularly those belonging to the vulnerable age groups, are likely to see themselves capable of taking the drastic step. If the number of suicide cases keeps increasing, there could come a point at which even otherwise normal people might consider suicide a viable option to deal with life’s hardships.



According to the Department of Health Services’ Family Health Division, 78 percent of suicide cases in Nepal are caused by psychological or mental trauma. In Nepal’s case, psychological traumas are mostly related to poverty, health concerns, gender-based violence and financial problems. The danger is that continued prevalence of these risk factors in conjunction with uninformed (even glamorized) reporting of suicides, could accelerate the march to the tipping point.



As it is, the situation is already troubling. Between July 2010 and June 2011, 262 suicide cases were registered in Kathmandu alone. These figures do not include suicide attempts: for every fatal suicide attempt, there are 20 unsuccessful ones. Parsing of suicide cases in Nepal reveals that women and adolescents are at an elevated risk of committing suicide, not surprising in a still highly patriarchal society with fast changing family values and social ties.



Although suicide rates are increasing, it remains underreported, which might not be a bad thing. Results from past social science experiments—controlling for other factors, the higher the number of uninformed reporting of suicide cases, the greater the number of suicides—suggest suicides need to be reported with caution. Strained family and social ties in a rapidly urbanizing Nepal coupled with its prolonged political instability and growing joblessness are making Nepalis increasingly vulnerable to suicide. The danger is that once the level of suicide hits a certain level (the tipping point), it might spiral out of control. It is thus important to try to nip the problem in the bud. The message going out to those suffering from elevated stress levels has to be that there are ways to successfully cope with life’s hardships and if needed, help is available.

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