Today, September 10 is the World Suicide Prevention Day. It is an awareness day observed every year, to provide worldwide commitment and action to prevent suicides, with various activities around the world since 2003. The International Association for Suicide Prevention champions this in collaboration with the World Health Organisation and other localised entities.
Suicide is preventable. The act of deliberately or inadvertently killing oneself is gruesome to all, especially the family members of the victim. Killing oneself intentionally is a global pandemic with age-long history across the divides and with reasons ranging from personal volition and society’s contributory negligence. Whichever way, both individual and institutional suicide missions can be prevented. Every suicide intent can be detected if we are aware and mindful of specific suicidal signals. I will throw my lights on the signs of potential suicide after considering a few statistics.
In the ranking of the suicide rates of 136 countries as published by Wikipedia, countries like Russia, Lithuania, Lesotho, Cameroon, Uganda, and Guyana maintained their top slots for 2016. In Russia, for example, the suicide rate per 100,000 population was at a record high of 41.4 percent in 1995, reduced to 13.8 percent in 2017. The income classification of the victims is revealing. High-Income countries accounted for 24.5 percent of the global suicide rate compared to 10.2 percent from Low-Income countries.
In Nigeria, as reported in the BusinessDay newspaper of December 29, 2019 ‘the Suicide Research and Prevention Initiative (SURPIN), which partners with the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria (APN), has found that about one-fifth of suicide cases seen at its affiliated institution are those aged 13-19 years and that the majority of the callers were aged 20- 39 years, and 63.5 percent of them were having thoughts of suicide at the time of calling; 28.2 percent were students’. The 63.5 percent of suicide thoughts within the age of 20-39 years is alarming. If this group manifests their mission to commit suicide, the current and future productive workforce’s capacity of the country will be threatened with the impact of colossal honour killings. We, therefore, need to take actions and prevent the suicide rate from increasing to the top roof.
SEE ALSO: https://businessday.ng/health/article/experts-highlight-how-media-can-report-suicide-better/
Suicide actions are intentional and individually driven for numerous reasons ranging from mental health illnesses. These mental health illnesses include depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, personality disorder and a whole range of causes. However, social, and environmental factors are known to have aid suicide aside the underlying mental health illnesses.
How do we prevent the increasing rate of suicide in Nigeria? The most straightforward answer is to be aware and look after one another
In our society, aside from the manifestation of suicide by a depressed individual, the country has also taken numerous rides to the Island of Suicide. We have as a country allow our leaders embarked on many suicide missions which are depressive enough to breed suicide thoughts and actions. Our leadership selection and the political process have made Nigeria poorer and poorer with little hope of survival for the poor masses. Take, for example, the deliberate decision to place religion and politics above education and seek for power has always produced for the North of Nigeria the highest number of idle and uneducated youths. These are the banditries and the Insurgents, causing security challenges in the country. Let the trust be told, the perceived injustice in the revenue allocation formula where the goose that lays the golden eggs receive less revenue than the idle components is a suicide journey that is dividing the country.
The abandonment of agriculture for oil was among the greatest suicide missions we have embarked on as a country. That mission was facilitated by our flawed leadership selection process, which is based on religion and ethnic considerations instead of capacity.
In Nigeria, an incompetent person can be elected to a powerful political position, and the same masses who elected the person based on sentiments will be praying for the person to perform. Our whole political system is devoid of ideology. That is why our politicians crisp-cross from APC to PDP on a mission to enrich themselves with money and power but provide a suicide platform for the majority. We have entrenched the politics of the carrot as a nation which has impoverished the majority; an institutional platform for suicide save for the tenacity of an average black person.
At the individual level, aside from the resultant mental illness from the inability to deal with life stresses, economic hardship from poor management of the national resources, relationships break-up and various misconception about religion are also the causes of suicide. Some of the youth are oppressed, and the desire to get rich like their counterparts makes life meaningless to them.
How do we prevent the increasing rate of suicide in Nigeria? The most straightforward answer is to be aware and look after one another. In a country, the government cannot help the poor given the enormous resources, and political offices have become self-gratification platforms; we have no choice than to look after ourselves. The suicide victims are not from the moon. They have family members, friends and colleagues that would have been helped to prevent their death if someone had spotted the signals of their suicide missions. There are things we can do from the individual, organisational and national perspectives to prevent suicide.
To celebrate and create awareness for today and reduce the rate of successful suicide actions among our people, I want you to see yourself as one of the agents to watch over others. The starting point is to watch over your emotional and mental wellbeing. I wrote an article on how to mind your mental balance during uncertain periods like COVID-19 a few weeks ago. If you can maintain your mental balance, you can help others by paying more attention to your family members, friends, and colleagues at work.
There are three signals to watch out for in preventing suicide. The UK’s Oxford Health Foundation Trust identified thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness as the primary factors that can lead to suicide desire. If combined with acquired capability, it will encourage a successful suicide act. Our role as our brothers’ or sisters’ keepers is to watch out for the vital warning signals of suicide. These signals include but not limited to dramatic and behavioural mood change, insomnia, anxiety or increased agitation, increased self-harm, rage/anger, increased substance abuse, disengagement, preparation and rehearsal behaviours, hopelessness, cannot see reasons for living, social withdrawal from family, and incessant talking about suicide.
These factors are the combination of signals required for the presence of thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. The opportunity to execute will be inevitable with access to suicide means. If you notice any of the above in your friends, colleagues, and family members, please go beyond seeing it to discussing it with the person and taking necessary precautions.
In the workplace, it is high the time we deliver a robust occupational health policy covering emotional abuse and traumatisation. Every work environment should have a wellbeing department that sees to the emotional balance of the staff beyond delivering on their key performance indicators. At the national level, the politicians need to stop embarking on suicide missions with self-less policies that provide the minimum standard of living for people. A situation where few are exotically rich and yet encircled by a multitude of poor and illiterates masses is an invitation to suicide in the immediate and long run.
Olugbemi FCCA, the Chief Responsibility Officer at Mentoras Leadership Limited and Founder, Positive Growth Africa. He can be reached on [email protected] or 08025489396.
