My Paroxysm on Suicide in Bhutan!

                                                My Paroxysm on Suicide!

What comes to your mind when I mention the word “Suicide”? Does it really make any sense to you? Well, this word is associated with stigma, pain and hopelessness. Many of those who had attempted to harm themselves or conceived an idea about putting the end to their problems through self-harm would be viewed as coward or stupid by many of us who are actually normal or resilient who can manage any kind of problem situations.
Let’s imagine that there are forty five of you reading my article and all of you are normal without any serious stressors at the moment. If I asked you whether you would commit suicide or not if you were trapped in a painful or difficult situation in life, I am sure that more than 90% of you would give me an emphatic “NO” and “Never in life”. However, the underlying fact is something different. When you are normal, your judgment is crystal clear and any decision you make would be done with deep contemplation and clarity. Hence, you would know that suicide is not an option to address your difficult situations. You can think about other viable solutions other than the act of self-harm.
However, when you are stuck with hopeless situations, your judgment would be impaired often by impulsivity or you would see suicide as the only viable solution to your entire problems. During such a time, if we fail stand by them, suicide would probably be quite imminent for that person.
There was a time, after an attempted pair suicide in Thimphu- a counselor was actually giving a debriefing session to those affected people by the situation. He asked the same question that I aforementioned and almost all of them gave the expected answer “NO”. There was one particular boy who actually said that even if someone pointed a gun at him warning him to say “Yes”, he would never say it. Unfortunately and ironically, that very boy ended his life for a simple problem after three weeks of the debriefing session. It may happen to anyone of us and such hopeless situations can trigger suicidal ideation or instigate us to opt for this imprudent approach. Therefore, we cannot take such situations lightly. We must accept the fact and always make sure that necessary support is received at the right time from the right people.
Few days ago, I had an opportunity to attend the third Edition of National Counseling Conference at the SAARC Banquet hall. The theme of the conference was “On Preventing Suicide: Reaching out and Saving Lives.” It was very disturbing to know that Bhutan was ranked 25th in 2011 and 21 in 2013 in terms of global suicide rate. At the current trend, it is said that seven people commit suicide every month and the most affected people are between 15 to 45 years of age. Suicide is of course ranked as top 6 killers in the country and the most disheartening fact is that it affects the most productive and promising group of our society. Further, it intensely undermines our profound philosophy of GNH.
Nevertheless, we must not despair by the stats and apparent suicide pandemic because suicide affects even most advanced and rich countries around the world yet they refuse to accept it as their national problems while Bhutan has recently accepted the problem of this pandemic. With acceptance of the problem, we have in fact become the 29th country in the world with the national suicide prevention plan in place. The acceptance of the problem will always lead to the explorations of answers and we have in fact embarked on our journey toward fixing the jigsaws of suicide that tarnishes our happiness image in the recent time.
His Excellency the Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay said that our national suicide prevention goal is Zero. This heralds a good beginning to our fight against suicide. Can we really succeed in bringing down the suicide rate to ZERO? Well, suicide is a complex interaction of various personal, economic and social issues and eradication of this pandemic would be almost possible but that does not mean that setting our goal at Zero is unreasonable. It is synonymous to our national goal of Gross National Happiness and it will guide us to achieve happiness but achievement of absolute happiness by every citizen of our country is next to impossible. Individual happiness depends on how one pursues it or views the happiness itself. This does not imply that GNH as a national goal is a shallow approach and the same principle can be applied to the prevention goal at Zero. We may not succeed in bringing down the suicide rate at zero but with acceptance and initiatives in place, at least we can bring down the rate of suicide or delay the suicide of the potential inevitable suicide victims.
Many question if we can actually prevent suicide? We can prevent suicide though we may not be able to wipe it out completely. We have a deeply rooted fallacy that if one is destined to die, no matter what we do, he or she would die. This makes us very complacent to fight against suicide. Have you ever tried to rewrite your own destiny? I tried and I guess I was successful on many occasions. We must believe that we can sometimes rewrite the misbegotten fate or destiny of others. Meaning, we can actually delay or prevent the predestined death of others or our close ones. I am not bragging my achievements: I have had helped several young people to overcome their suicidal ideations or suicide survivors to cope up with their hopeless situations. Many of them are doing really fine today. I do have some unsuccessful stories of my suicide prevention approaches. I still feel upset for my failure to save lives when I had the opportunities but more than the setbacks, I have more stories of success which give me a reason to believe that we can actually prevent or delay suicides.
One must know that the stats tell us more of our failure to prevent suicides but if you want to have the first hand facts on the success stories, you must get it from teachers, counselors and doctors who are the most significant people who are often the saviors of many people who are almost at the noose end of their untimely deliberate death. In a nutshell, we can prevent or delay suicides.
Well, I wish to share my in depth views on the prevention of suicides amongst our young people, close ones, friends and our neighbors but I fear that you may be tired by this lengthy gibber of mine. However, I would like to share a succinct opinion on some of the basics of suicide prevention. First and foremost, we must accept the fact that social-disconnect can cause isolation and loneliness.
Bhutan is a small society and by the situation itself we are inclined to share only the better part of our life with those around us while we always try to conceal the dark side of our life. This is one reason that we have many to share our hay-day while you are left alone to drown in your own ocean of darkness. For instance, many of us knew those individuals the moment their private videos went viral and everyone of us were indulged into watching and gossiping about those victims the very next moment. It is like everyone knows everyone in Bhutan and this makes us impossible to share the dark side of our life with our close ones. If you continue to bottle up your problems, it can drag you into the clutches of depression, which is one of the major causes of suicide around the globe. You must know that sometimes depression that you go through won’t even show any signs until it becomes fatal to you. Therefore, the major step toward suicide prevention is reaching out to those who are undergoing such painful situations while they can learn to accept their problems and decide to share with someone who can actually be there to attentively listen to their problem stories. Sharing of problem itself has a therapeutic impact on the one who narrates it while attentive listening of the listeners will actually make the narrators feel that at least there is someone who cares. The moment he or she feels that there is someone who cares, a new hope would dawn in him or her. Hope can actually be the impetus for his new insight into his problem that would inspire him to jettison his or her ideation of suicide. Hope can empower him or her with courage to confront the problems.
The next step of prevention is to recognize the warning signs…I guess it is too long…who would love to read such a lengthy article that doesn’t interest you? I am tempted to write about this stigmatized subject and I am sure the moment people read it, they would chastise my view but remember folks, my intention is very clear that I want to educate people about this apparently rising pandemic and help them at least to work toward preventing suicides in their community…