Preventing suicides in the pandemic: The first step is to accept mental health matters

According to recent data published by Nepal Police, at least 5,673 committed suicide during the first ten months of the current fiscal year 2020/21. This means the suicide rate has gone up by 1.5 per cent as compared to figures from the last fiscal year that recorded 6,085 suicide cases in the whole year. This number is even higher than the Covid-19 fatalities recorded in the period. One needs to understand that the figures are only the records of the police while many suicide incidents must have gone unreported.

Medical experts have explicitly linked increasing suicide rates with the mental health problems that surfaced in the wake of the pandemic. During the pandemic, mental health problems have reportedly increased due to the intense feeling of despair, anxiety, fragility, helplessness and meaningless of life among people of all walks of life as they are faced with unfavourable realities of working from home, financial insecurities, job losses, online schooling of children and lack of physical closeness with friends and family members. It goes without saying that prolonged prohibitory orders, isolation, contact restriction, economic downturns and loss of livelihood opportunities, and prolonged academic calendars have severely devastated people’s emotional well-being.