Reach out to the suicide-minded

By Shauna Jemmott
CHAIRPERSON of the Women and Gender Equality Commission and former Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Ms Indra Chandarpal, is calling on Guyanese to stop placing labels on individuals who commit suicide, and start empathising with, and reaching out to, persons experiencing depression.

The rate of suicide in Guyana has skyrocketed, making this country the leader in suicide cases in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Many suicide cases have been reported in the media over the past months, the most recent being the death of 21-year-old Roshinee Phagwah of Reliance Abandon, East Canje, Berbice, who plunged to her death at the 741-foot Kaieteur Falls while she was part of a tour on November 21.

STOP LABELLING PEOPLE
Speaking at a recent press conference, Chandarpal said labelling people “is not the best thing”, but families of individuals and members of the wider society should try positioning themselves in the lives of potential suicide victims, “getting into their shoes” to understand “where they’re coming from”.
She said though there are various issues that contribute to suicide, depression is the most profound of them all.
She said society needs to take a deep look at depression, since it affects every individual at some point in their lives, and if not addressed properly, those suffering could easily give up.
“It’s not good enough to say only people who are cowards take their lives,” she said. “There are people who are educated and middle-classed and everything, but are unable to deal with the issues at hand, and feel the easiest thing, since they can’t cope, is to ‘Let me just walk away from everything’.”

EMOTIONAL TRAUMA
Sensing that not too many were aware of the gravity of the situation, she asked: “How many of us understand the emotional trauma of our young people today?”
Among some of the suffering the youths of today experience, she said, are unemployment and isolation. And after successfully acquiring an education, some find it difficult to secure employment and become impatient. Some of them isolate themselves, she said, locking in with social media, and as a result do not have opportunities to relax and play. They become dejected, considering their own troubles.
“How is it that the social media can make us become introverts in the way in which we all spend our time reading messages, face-booking, texting, locking our rooms doing the same thing…We are slowly removing ourselves from interaction with people, with play, from learning how to interact with people out there.”
She said studies relating to the countrywide rate of suicide suggest that one of every five persons suffering from depression has a tendency to contemplate suicide, and she recommended urgent, widespread community intervention.
“I do not honestly feel that community intervention is put to work here. Sometimes we expect intervention at the national level or from an institution that is there. In an NDC, there are young people who are going through all kinds of trouble…then you have to wait until somebody comes to the ministry, or come to help and shelter, or find a social worker to help them. For us as a nation, we have to think about what are the community initiatives we can put in place that we may be able to help.
“Whether they are victims of violence, whether they are children dropping out of schools, whether they are young people who are going through depression, as a nation we have to be concerned and try to find ways of dealing with this,” the former government minister voiced.