Outburst of Suicide and mental health advisories on social media. And my very own experience with suicidal thoughts.

               

 

Yes, i want to do it and going to end my life while you read this ,now help me if you can. Can you??
Okay relax  the tittle and the first line was just to steal your attention towards the article. Now if you got tiny bit of concern about me by reading it, well thank you but the one who wants to suicide will perform it without writing an article like this so your concern after reading some “suicide notification” will meant nothing to that person.
So ,What do we know about suicide exactly? Where does we exactly stand in the field of suicide?? 

Let's talk about it.
Suicide is among the top three causes of death among youth worldwide. According to the WHO, every year almost one million people die from suicide and 20 times more people attempt suicide its global mortality rate is 16 per 100,000, or one death every 40 seconds and one attempt every 3 seconds, on average. that means while you reading this article, a person hanged himself dead and several others tried to hang themselves and failed. Suicide worldwide was estimated to represent almost 2.4% of people in 2020. Where India ranks 19th on chart of suicide rate worldwide with increasing potential.

To get a better understanding of the history I would like you to hop in my “ Ship of Time” .Now what is  this ship of time? It's the same variant  of Tyson's “Ship of imagination” from the Cosmos series. In ship of time we will not imagine things which we did not experienced. But We will discuss about concrete history and a solid reality.
Hop in  And let's see what history say about SUICIDE.

The story of suicide is probably as old as that of man himself. Through the ages, suicide has variously been glorified, romanticized, bemoaned, and even condemned. Form Greeks to Romans several figures like Aegeus ,Socrates, Domesthenes ,Brutus, Cassius, Mark Anthony or the Egyptian princess, Cleopatra or the suicide bombers in the present world, the universality of suicide excelled religion and culture.
Lets understand suicide in the Indian context.
Ancient Indian texts contain stories of valor in which suicide as a means to avoid shame and disgrace was glorified. Suicide has been mentioned in the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata.
Just rewind your memory few days back during the lockdown and remember when you were sad about the End of Ramayana on DD and flooding the social media with #what_to_watch_next . I genuinely hope that you all have learnt some values from the epic. Now if u remember the last episode of Ramayana when lord Shri Ram died or drown himself, there was an epidemic of suicide in ayodhya. And similarly The sage Dadhichi sacrificed his life so that the Gods may use his bones  in the war against the demons i.e vajra. So concept of suicide  has been there always.
And  further some Holy material like Bhagavad Gita which condemns suicide for selfish reasons and asumes that such a death cannot have “shraddha’ श्राद्ध i.e  the all-important last rites. Brahmanical view had held that those who attempt suicide should fast for a stipulated period. And Upanishads, the Holy Scriptures, condemn suicide and state that ‘he who takes his own life will enter the sunless areas covered by impenetrable darkness after death’.

However,  our own   Vedas permit suicide for religious reasons and consider that the best sacrifice was that of one's own life. Suicide by starvation, also known as ‘sallekhana’, was linked to the attainment of ‘moksha’ i.e (liberation from the cycle of life and death), and is still practiced to this day. For e.g Gurus taking smadhis. There was an another example of suicide in our indian society “sati”  where Rajput women killed themselves to avoid humiliation at the hands of the invading Muslim armies, and were practiced until as recently as the early half of the 20^th century and stray cases continue to be reported till date.
For now that will be all with the history of suicide in our society as we know there are different and vast reasons to pursue suicide.
A truism in suicide literature is that “not all persons who commit suicide want to die and not all persons who want to die commit suicide.
In  India, the top 10 causes or correlates of suicide in 2009 were family problems (23.7%), illness (21%) [including insanity/mental illness (6.7%)], unemployment (1.9%), love affairs (2.9%), drug abuse/addiction (2.3%), failure in examination (1.6%), bankruptcy or sudden change in economic status (2.5%), poverty (2.3%), and dowry dispute (2.3%).
Till now i have given you all the statistics and history of suicide.
Now i want to talk about the slow poison  Which  kills you inch by inch And makes you a coward after you die.
Yes i am talking about depression the most obvious reason and illness to blame.
Although it is the most obvious reason after someone is dead and to blame on. But it isn't so obvious when the person was alive.
We blame depression as the cause of every suicide but only after suicide.
We don't talk about depression in general. I don't blame anyone because we are  somewhere raised like that , be tough , kind of insensitive attitude. I see a total fault of our education system for this illness and also the society's view on getting help for depression.
But i want to ask those with #restinpeace kind of people that Where are these supportive people on a normal day to day basis????
This supportive community which has came into the conscience today where it was when someone was still alive?? Because i didn't saw any helpline numbers on your feed. Or any so called “Dm me”messages on your story . So stop being sympathiser and stop being this much concern about suicide.Well Its not your fault its the way we are in this era. We are just all  fake instaSympathisers.

  Depression and myself  we both shared a relationship once. Yes  me too . I had also suffered from it. And still recovering. In December 2019 i met with an accident and fractured my spine. So if you know there is no medical assistance for your spine like your fractured arm. You simply cannot bind your spine in plaster and get away with it , its not that simple and not even practical . So after that day i was not  able to move an inch.  And I was  told to lie down on my back for straight 40 days. Just imagine the scenario,that you are lying on your back and keeping the back in a straight alignment as much as possible and acting as plaster yourself. You can't change the sides when you are sleeping , you can't take a shit by yourself, you can't piss on your own, you can't eat on your own. You are totally dependent on others from head to toe. Although i was lying on the bed all  time horizontally and it seems like resting but it was a hell for me inside.
My mind was exploding with thoughts and  these thoughts are not negative but“Dark” , I can't explain them, i wonder if i was able to move a little that time what would i have done to myself.

The people i was dependent upon is my family. And they are the one who brought me back on my feet . I shared every emotion that i felt that time with my family. And it helped to the large extent.
So i believed from that day on, nobody is more qualified than your family in terms of dealing with depression. You just need to sit next to them. Especially in this time of so called pandemic lockdown and social distancing. You need to Keep in constant  touch with your family.

These helpline may help but these fake concern of this supportive community that has emerged in a day with mental health advisories is going to be vanish in a week and reemerge with another suicide.

I have read somewhere  that writing your thoughts helps in curing depression well that's what i started these days. Help yourself.