Suicide prevention: a task for public health and a role for public health ethics (original) (raw)
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Right to commit suicide in India: A comparative analysis with suggestion for the policymakers
2022
Every year an alarming number of people of all ages and genders are committing suicide or attempting to extinguish their own life globally and India is not an exception. Under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 attempt to commit suicide is still considered an offense. In many countries of Africa, suicide is considered legal and in Asia, most of the countries have decriminalized attempted suicide except a few countries like India. The scenario is also changing in the USA and UK. This paper provides a structural literature review on the existing legal framework in different jurisdictions regarding the right to commit suicide from a comparative perspective. The paper scrutinized the compared data and intends to conclude that the state should not curtail the liberty of people attempting suicide by imprisoning or punishing them as the right to life also includes the right to a dignified death. Several recommendations for the policymakers have been made in the last part of the paper.
Debate:Suicide is a Societal, not a Mental Health or Even a Public Health Problem
World Social Psychiatry, 2021
In this debate the focus is on suicide which is a complex maze, wherein multiple parameters intersect. The first part of the paper questions many basic premises which have been taken as given in the discourse of suicide and currently form the substrate of conversations around suicide. The basic premise is that this societal problem has been expropriated by health professionals. They have assumed ownership without having the wherewithal to address the many contributory factors to suicide-social, economic, cultural, and moral. Suicide prevention plans are ritually rolled out despite a consistent record of repeated failures. There is a need to move against the tide and reimagine the subject in light of macrolevel evidence. The second part posits that for an issue as complex as suicide, it is important to think inclusively rather than looking for simplistic answers in either/or way, and the larger societal, economic and even political issues will need to be factored in.
Suicide and Social Justice: New Perspectives on the Politics of Suicide and Suicide Prevention, 2019
Suicide is a vital issue of social justice for our times. That is the core philosophical and practical-political claim of this book. The purpose of this edited volume is to bring diverse scholarly and social justice perspectives to bear on the problem of suicide and suicidal behavior for a variety of populations within many different regions of the world today. What do we mean by a social justice approach to suicide? Analyses of the relationship between particular social concerns such as unemployment, rising levels of inequality, poverty, social integration or exclusion, and deaths by suicide have been a fairly consistent feature of modern bio-political engagements with the issue. With 79% of global suicides occurring in low-and middle-income countries (WHO 2018) and with more than half of all people dying by suicide in the United States without any known mental health condition (CDC 2018), the complex relationships between key demographic factors (gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, rurality, veteran status, etc.) and suicide remains a vital and ongoing concern. Indeed, over the last decade or more, there has been a growing willingness to see suicide as a public health issue and not one that is reducible to any singular or mono-casual explanation (WHO). Yet, there is still a limit in how far scholars, public officials, clinicians, and concerned citizens are willing to go in thinking about the constitutive interactions between individuals and the entrenched and long-term social-structural conditions and processes in relation to which individuals live. A social justice approach to suicide and suicide prevention-inspired by scholars such as Iris Marion Young (2006; 2011)-emphasizes that we need to develop a greater understanding for the ways in which structural social processes create enduring background conditions-with their own cultural, economic, and policy histories-that generate
Global Suicide: the problem of health systems
International Archives of Medicine, 2015
It is estimated that over 800 000 people die by suicide and that there are many suicide attempts for each death. Young people are among those most affected. The numbers differ between countries, but it is the low-and middle-income countries that bear most of the global suicide burden, with an estimated 75% of all suicides occurring in these countries. The importance of each risk factor and the way it is classified will depend on each context. These factors can contribute to suicidal behaviours directly but can also contribute indirectly by influencing individual susceptibility to mental disorders. From the analysis of the rate of suicide, the numbers of suicide preventions successful with the number of hospitalizations and hospitalized for attempted suicide, it becomes possible to determine a path in order to create social change in three important factors to be followed to be fulfilled: knowledge (scientific and practical), public support (political will) and a social strategy, showing up as a national response to achieve the goals of suicide prevention.
Suicide Behaviour in India: Its Identification and Prevention.
Jharkhand Journal of Development and Management Studies, Vol. 10, No. 4. , 2012
The phenomenon of suicide has emerged as a global problem. People attempt and commit suicide for a variety of reasons, and in diverse social and personal circumstances. In India the number of suicide cases per year is increasing at an alarming rate. But, as a result of prevailing social and religious attitudes suicide is under reported. Several researchers have studied suicide in different parts of India to understand the risk factors and protective factors in order to formulate strategies to prevent this social pathology. In the light of the above, the present paper attempts to study the suicide behaviour in India with special reference to its causes, identification, treatment and the strategies of prevention. The study is based on secondary literature like books, journals, reports and web based research within the context of suicide behaviour. Suicides can be prevented at individual level, family level, community level, and religious level by teachers, councillors and mass media. It is high time to make action plans for preventing suicide on the part of society, government and NGOs..Suicide prevention in India requires public health interventions.There is a need to reduce the medicalisation of personal and social distress and focus on other underlying causes of human suffering, including poverty, economic inequality and lack of social justice.
Suicidality–Medical Care and Treatment in a Legal Perspective-A Question of Suicide Prevention
The present work is enquiring into the legal implications of suicide and suicidality in Swedish health and medical legislation. Most people taking their own lives have been in contact with medical care before committing suicide, most commonly with psychiatric care or with general practitioners. Can it be argued that medical law is also concerned with preventing suicide as far as possible, just as traffic safety law is concerned with reducing the number of traffic deaths? The ethical principles underpinning good healthcare include not only the principle of self-determination but also the principle of maximising good and the principle of minimising harm. Can a teleological interpretation of the meaning, scope and legal effects of the medical law enactments be said to show a preventive purpose? Furthermore, why does not the Swedish compulsory psychiatric regulation (LPT) have the general stated purpose of protecting a mentally ill person from self-destructiveacts endangering the own life, while retaining the purpose of protecting others from that person’s aggressive acts? The material used in answering the topics of enquiry now stated comprises material from courts of law and from public authorities. Concurrently with the legal case material, however, I also present the results of an interview survey. The case material has also been supplemented with a questionnaire study aimed at canvassing the view taken by medical science of the content of the three basic LPT concepts of “serious mental disturbance”, “imperative need of care” and “absence of consent” in a suicide situation. Both voluntary and compulsory legal regulations can be said to have a suicide prevention function. Healthcare personnel have a duty of curing and relieving the suicidal individual and, if necessary, forcibly preventing him or her from committing suicide. Implementation of correct analyses of events in connection with suicide is an exceedingly important instrument of suicide prevention.
Suicidal Tendencies in Contemporary World: Causes and Prevention
Indian Journal of Health & Medical Law, 2022
Suicide is a public health and social unlawful phenomenon which is known as a conscious or an unconscious tragic reaction to stress, depression or trauma demonstrated by an individual or a group of individuals with a direct or indirect intention of putting an end to their own lives by either selfpoisoning, shooting, knifing or by hanging (voluntary homicide). This persistent social reoccurrence is the fourth leading mortality rate in the world today with a death rate ranging from 700000 to 800000 (seven hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand) per year with about 77% rate in Africa and other underdeveloped countries across the globe. This has prompted the researchers to embark on this topic so as to succinctly address the causes and prevention of suicide in contemporary world. The paper also has as objectives to reveal the classes of suicide hardly anticipated by the society, negligible but dangerous.