Mental illness, not 'problems', drive people to commit suicide

As September, World Suicide Prevention Month, draws to a close, the World Health Organisation reminds us that one person dies by suicide every 40 seconds, and that for every one person who kill themselves, 20 people attempt suicide.

It will take an average reader about three minutes to read this article. This means by the time you finish reading it, five people will likely have died by suicide, and a hundred others have attempted suicide.

In Kenya, the common phrase ‘committing suicide’ became an oxymoron after the High Court ruled that taking one’s own life, or even attempting to do so, was not a criminal offence. Indeed, to say that someone ‘committed suicide’ implies the person committed a crime against themselves.

Still, this does not take away the fact that suicide involves the loss of a life, and that one life lost, whether by oneself or at the hands of another, is one life too many.

One of the questions that hangs over many suicide deaths is: Why do people kill themselves?

We confronted several leading psychiatrists with this question in one of those stories about suicide in Nairobi. The person had left behind a suicide note blaming the usual suspects: A broken relationship, trouble at work, money problems, et cetera.

Just when we thought our story was ready, it was already half-written from the suicide note-our editor threw a spanner in the works. He wanted us to speak with a psychiatrist and ask that simple question: Why do people kill themselves?

We spoke to several psychiatrists in Nairobi-serious fellows, not any of those fellows that seem to delight in the sound of their own voices-and they all said one thing: People do not kill themselves simply because they have relationship, money, or work problems- people kill themselves because they are mentally unwell.

They said that problems do not kill people, and that perhaps the only connection between what people who die by suicide are going through in life and their suicide is that they became too mentally unwell to handle life’s realities.

According to the experts, the fact that many people who die by suicide admit to facing trouble at home or at work is, in itself, a clear indication that they were unwell.

Arguments for or against this suicide theory, and indeed, many other arguments about suicide, can go on until the resurrection of the dinosaur, but one thing is undebatable: Suicide does not hurt those who die by suicide as much as those they leave behind; those who have to carry burdens of guilt (including the guilt of not feeling guilty), regret and sometimes, anger.

These burdens are especially heavy for those whose names appear on suicide notes written by persons who were too unwell to realise the full impact of accusing someone of causing their death.

As Suicide Prevention Month draws to an end, society needs to embrace those who continue to bear the brunt of the stigma that still surrounds suicide, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, sons, daughters and friends, who continue to bear the burden of guilt over a death they had no hand in, and whose only crime was having a relationship with persons who chose to die by suicide.

For those who still believe that only persons who can no longer handle life’s issues ‘like men (or women)’ die by suicide, available research indicates that one in every four people has thought about suicide at one point in their lives.

This means that many people on the streets may already be struggling with suicidal thoughts or even, subconsciously, trying to kill themselves in various ways, such as leading suicidal lifestyles.

Whether it is legal or not, suicide is not normal and must not be normalised. Unfortunately, researchers have found that media stories on suicide may be linked to a spike in suicide cases. As such, it would be suicidal to make more people start considering suicide as an option by making stories about suicide a daily media diet.

Mr Muchiri is a media and public communications consultant.