Suicide prevention strategies must broaden their scope. This was the message broadcast both nationally and internationally — the latter in The Lancet Public Health journal — on World Suicide Prevention Day. Public health experts in India communicated the importance of social risk factors to policymakers, saying that suicide was not a mental health issue alone. This is also the conclusion of the researchers in the Lancet, written on this year’s theme of changing the narrative on suicide. This is of the utmost importance to India, where suicide rates are higher than the global average. One study showed over 2,30,000 suicide deaths in 2016. The most tragic aspect of this is that 40% of these are of young people. India’s share in world suicide deaths increased from about 25% in 1990 to 36% in 2016. This would suggest that prevention strategies are not working as they should. Perhaps the national suicide prevention strategy produced by the Union health ministry in 2022 emphasising mental health was not adequate. Helplines and clinical interventions are certainly indispensable, but primary causes must also be sought in social and economic factors.

In India, these causes are hardly indiscernible. Farmers’ suicides because of debt were one example. Even today, debt remains a cause of suicide. Unemployment, domestic violence, addiction, a sense of isolation are obvious causes, while suicide deaths in high-pressure institutions such as the coaching centres in Kota are a revealing example of the complex reasons for young people’s despair. Students’ suicides increase by 4% every year, double the national rate of increase, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Besides, a number of tragedies show that alleged caste discrimination and harassment can lead to suicide even in India’s most prestigious institutions. Domestic violence, much of it silent, is, again, a persistent issue. In 2021, homemakers accounted for 51.5% of the total number of women’s suicides. Even if this does not mean they all suffered from domestic violence, it also does not mean that all the deaths occurred solely from mental health problems. Addressing social risk factors, including financial, educational and gender-based issues, is uncomfortable, because it leads to questions about the quality of life based on governmental policies and practices. Yet that is the only way, coupled with clinical help, that can bring people back from the edge of hopelessness.