MITHI: Report of a unique study launched on Monday revealed that 60 per cent of suicide victims in Tharparkar were teenagers and strongly recommended abolition of Section 325 of Pakistan Penal Code to decriminalise suicide.

The study conducted with technical help of the country’s top psychiatrists and psychiatry institutes and steered by the Sindh Mental Health Authority (SMHA) with the help of Sindh government, health department, district administration of Tharparkar, Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Dow University and Sir Cowasjee Institute of Psychiatry urged the provincial government to table the Suicide Prevention Act in Sindh Assembly.

The report titled Psychological autopsy of suicide cases registered in district Tharparkar revealed that 24pc of the suicide victims already suffered from different types of mental illness, while only nine per cent of the victims were found to be indebted.

It says that 60pc of the victims were in the age bracket of 10 to 20, 36pc were aged between 21 and 30, nine per cent were found to be 31 and 40 years of age and only five per cent of the victims were aged 41 years and above.

Recommends abolition of Section 325 of Pakistan Penal Code to decriminalise suicide

It says that the victims, among them around 45pc of females and 15pc of males, had no formal education, whereas 60pc females were housewives and 40pc of the victims belonged to low-income groups. They were unskilled labourers, peasants, daily wage workers and small-scale business owners, it says.

In terms of method of suicide, the report says that 73pc of the victims hanged themselves, while 36pc had previously expressed the wish to die earlier. The report notes that 15pc of the victims had attempted suicide previously before finally accomplishing it with female to male ratio at 4:1.

The study found that 52pc of suicides were pre-planned and 48pc were sudden and impulsive acts as described by family members. The month of April and May were crucial during which a high number of suicide cases was recorded, said the report.

SMHA chairman and former PPP senator Dr Karim Khawaja said the study had unearthed the real reasons behind rising suicide cases. “No such study has been conducted across South Asia. It will greatly help formulate suicide prevention policies and legislation,” he said.

He said the government must introduce the Suicide Prevention Act and amend Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code to decriminalise suicide. “Sindh government has to set up an effective surveillance system to document suicide cases under a suicide-death registration system on a priority basis. It will require sound linkages through the development of a software between health, human rights, police and legal departments with the help of specific human resource to document suicide cases properly in near future,” he said.

PPP MPA Faqir Sher Mohammad Bilalani said that parents and heirs of the suicide victims often avoided registering cases and allowing conduct of physical and psychological autopsies. The legislation should be introduced to make it binding on police and mental health professionals to properly investigate suicide cases, he said.

Tharparkar Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Nawaz Soho said that evidence-based policymaking would help address this grave problem and suggested that mental health professionals should also conduct surveys and studies of jail inmates as they must be going through depression of a different nature.

Prof Dr Syed Haider Raza Naqvi of Dow University Karachi said the case study of Tharparkar district had taken a lead in the campaign to prevent suicide cases in Pakistan. “Criminalisation of suicide cases is a major impediment to investigate cases to determine socioeconomic and psychological aspects of the cases,” he said.

Mohsin Babar of Thar Foundation, which had sponsored the study, said the report demanded an extensive mental health service provision in the district as 76pc of suicide victims never consulted mental health practitioners at any stage.

“It is high time we focused more on this terrible trend to curb the factors which often forced people to take extreme steps,” he said and added that the foundation would continue to support the activities which were aimed at serving people of the desert district.

Published in Dawn, August 24th, 2021