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Suicide is not just a mental health issue, but a larger, structural one. The responsibility of preventing suicide cannot be shouldered by individuals without the infrastructural improvements.+
Not everyone is a trained therapist, partners, families, friends can only give support to some extent, but in the absence of larger support systems, it will often prove to be futile. +
Having dated someone with Bipolar comorbid with severe depression, I can tell you it's insanely difficult. And being someone suffering from BPD myself, it was a nightmare. And I cut off from him after an instance of suffering physical violence.+
I needed to save myself and before that I did everything in my capacity, provided them with access to free mental health care both medical and psychological counselling. But that was the extent of what I could do.I could provide him access to these because of my social capital.+
These facilities should be made widely available, to the masses, especially to the most marginalised who find it most difficult to have access to the mental health care system. +
The mental health care system also needs to be inclusive, aware of social systems of inequalities like caste, class, gender etc and the impact of these on people.+
And this is the responsibility of the state. Individuals can but do a tiny bit, but these are serious structural changes that only the state is capable of implementing. +
No amount of "I am listening" messages will work if the state does not make the public mental healthcare system more informed and efficient.
Suicide is a problem, it's not a trope to win elections or topple governments, or vilify communities. +
Suicide is a problem, it's not a trope to win elections or topple governments, or vilify communities. +
According to the article linked here: India doesn't even have 1 psychiatrist per 1 lakh people.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341936/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6341936/
