– urges action on suicide prevention
Health Minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy said mental health has been sidelined in the health sector here and regionally for years because of minimal investments and general neglect, and he called yesterday for a paradigm shift in how the problem is tackled.
The health sector has seriously overlooked the problem, Ramsammy acknowledged, but he observed it can no longer be ignored given the burden of suicide on public health and its consequent impact on development. He said suicide significantly affects the sector here even though it is a preventable public health problem.
Guyana opened a two-day regional workshop on the ‘Prevention and Control of Suicidal Behaviours’ at the Pegasus Hotel yesterday, which aims at addressing key areas of suicide prevention, behaviours and data trends. It is also expected that the countries involved which include Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and Suriname, will prepare a framework for national suicide prevention strategies using WHO guidelines.
The workshop is focused on strengthening and building mental health capacity, but Ramsammy expressed concern that the talks will amount to “just that, talk”. He charged that it is time less talking is done on the issue and more action is taken to implement effective solutions. According to him, a string of workshops have been held in the past and mental health has not benefited in any significant way.
“Are we doing enough? I can pose the question and ask whether people are satisfied with where we are now [in terms of mental health] and the response is likely to be, ‘we need to do more,’” the minister said.
Ramsammy said despite the gravity of mental health in Guyana, regionally and globally it has failed to attract adequate budgetary allocations, adding that the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) has also not made the required reciprocal investment in the light of the disease burden the problem poses.
He called for greater attention to be paid to mental disorders and challenged the participants at the workshop to address the effects of neuropsychiatric disorders since according to him, “these are the areas which have been neglected in the wider mental health context”. Ramsammy also called on the participants to tackle the issue of accessibility of chemicals with the aim of developing and implementing approaches to restrict such access because pesticide and poison ingestion has been the leading cause of suicide deaths here.
The minister mentioned that Guyana has initiated a ‘follow-back’ methodology in suicide prevention that aims at studying suicidal behaviour in an attempt to identify early signs. The suicide rate locally is approximately 20-25 per 100,000 population and it has been consistent for years. Suicide has also ranked seventh of the ten major causes of death in Guyana for years, averaging around 200 deaths annually.
Ramsammy said too that Guyana has a poor record of attempted suicide cases, noting that while reliable figures have been maintained over the years of suicides a similar effort has been lacking as it relates to attempted suicides. Further he said there is still a considerable distance to go in addressing suicide prevention and mental health in general, adding that there is need for critical support mechanisms as well as understanding in full the complexity of the issues.
Dr Kathleen Israel, PAHO’s Country Represen-tative spoke of the need for mental health to be meaningfully included in national public health planning, and she emphasized time has long passed for due recognition to be paid to the problem. Israel said the sector must pay attention to the individual as a whole, both mentally and physically.
Israel referred to suicide as a difficult problem to address, but underscored that any approach to suicide prevention should be multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary involving government, legislators, social groups, communities and families among others. She said also the response to mental health problems must be expanded and the necessary social structures put in place to address the issues, particularly suicide. She lamented that suicide is taking too many young lives, reiterating it is a preventable problem, and called for a crisis centre to be set up where people with problems can go to and reach out to trained health care workers. She added that a safety net must be put in place which offers such services.
She hailed the regional workshop as an important step in raising the profile of mental health, noting that the two-day session critically devotes adequate time to the issue and understanding the complexities involved. According to her, the objectives include reviewing successful models of care and implementing more effective national strategies.
World Suicide Prevention Day is to be observed on Thursday and according to Israel the Americas record the highest numbers of cases annually. Global figures as estimated by the WHO indicate that nearly one million persons commit suicide annually.
