Talking mental health

The staggering number of suicides in the recent past is a wake-up call for us.

This Saturday, October 10, marks World Mental Health Day. As the world comes together in its fight against the coronavirus, this year’s slogan, ‘Mental health for all’, sounds pretty prescient for the world and for Nepal. During the first 74 days of the lockdown, 1,227 people across the country committed suicide. Among them, 149 were teenagers. Data of the Non-Communicable Disease and Mental Health Section of the Epidemiology and Disease Control Division also show that 6,261 people took their own lives in the fiscal year 2019-20. It is an alarming increase in the number of suicides, compared to 5,785 in all of last year.