- We keep telling our people that they can just call and talk;
- That they can just approach their colleagues or family members and just, you know ‘talk about it’.
A Roman stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist and satirist, once said, “Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” This statement has come alive, literally, to so many people across the world.
Every year close to 800,000 people die from suicide globally. The World Health Organization reports that the number of suicide cases in Kenya rose by 58 percent between 2008 and 2017. Out of 421 documented cases in 2017, 330 involved men, while 91 were women. Kenya is ranked 114 out of 175 countries with the highest rates of suicide.
Massive under-reporting due to cultural stigma and suicide criminalisation has left Kenyans without much incentive or ammunition to understand, diagnose or solve the issue of suicide effectively. Recently, residents in Nyeri, Kirinyaga and Meru have reported at least five suicidal events per week. Our Universities are no different, with students killing each other and themselves for unclear reasons.
There is no such loss as one from suicide. The process of grief can be very complex and traumatic; whether the circumstances can be explained or not, whether the event occurred suddenly or came with a warning.
Family members usually never know that someone they love is planning to commit suicide; the person may also not even be aware. There is still a very powerful stigma against mental illness (strongly associated with suicide), and many religions fervently condemn suicide as a sin. Survivors therefore are discouraged from disclosing or acknowledging circumstances leading to suicide attempts and prefer keeping it a secret.
A psychiatry investigation done in 2016 suggests that almost half of the people who try to kill themselves do so impulsively; this means that the decision to end own life is usually made within a few minutes, making it hard for anyone to notice that something is wrong or do something about it.
In Kenya, adequate psychiatric care is hard to find, hard to pay for, or even get into. In patient care is set aside for the extreme mentally ill cases, and even then, capacity to admit or treat them is still not enough. Individuals who are fortunate to get into rehabilitation centres often complain about quality of services offered, despite the high amount of money they pay for treatment.
Sure, suicide hotlines and anti-stigma campaigns help to connect people to suicide and mental healthcare services, but we still need more and effective psychiatric facilities and research into timely and better treatment of severe depression among other mental illnesses, and suicidal thoughts.
Suicide is preventable, but not in a simple way. We keep telling our people that they can just call and talk; that they can just approach their colleagues or family members and just, you know ‘talk about it’. This is possible in some cases. Often for people that are still not deeply involved in their own destructive thoughts.