Guyana’s National Suicide Crisis hotline was abandoned as it was a complete “failure,” said Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran.
“I will say this, the suicide hotline was a failure,” Ramsaran told Stabroek News in an interview. He said the hotline, which was launched in 2010, was receiving only 2.5 calls per week and an estimated 9 calls per month and therefore the ministry started looking at other ways to address the rapidly rising cases of suicide in the country.
According to information gathered, he said, some of the calls were not suicide-related and so, after funding was lost for the project, the ministry decided to do more community works. “We decided to get down to the grassroots level where people must not turn to telephone but to the next person just in the corner to say I have a problem,” he said.
But the crisis hotline, he said, was not completely forgotten and the ministry attempted to merge the AIDS Secretariat hotline with the suicide hotline, since both were underutilised. But after research, the ministry decided against this since data showed “that at that time it was not the way to go,” he said.
Asked if he would resume the programme, given Guyana’s ranking as the country with the highest suicide rate in the world, Ramsaran said his ministry was looking at other methods to intervene and prevent the scourge. He said the ministry were examining a more evidence-based approach where it would engage people at the community level through governmental and non-governmental intervention.
“It’s nice to talk about a telephone line, …but it was not the way to go at that time,” he said, noting that the ministry is currently training people to reach out to the vulnerable and also working to get rid of the legislation which brands suicide as a criminal offence.
Ramsaran said that piece of legislation creates stigma instead of help. “We need to show compassion…,” he said. Also, he said the ministry has been focusing more on curbing substance abuse and domestic violence because the majority of suicides, categorically, are murder-suicides.
The suicide hotline was launched by former health minister Dr Leslie Ramsammy, who had stated that every call would be recorded and studied while responses will be monitored. The hotline, which was functioning as a 12-hour service in its pilot stage, was expected to eventually become a 24-hour service.
It was part of a comprehensive programme to reduce the number of suicide attempts and deaths. The ministry had stated that with the hotline, it would be in a better position to respond to various social factors that affect health, particularly those that contribute to violence, domestic and sexual abuse.
Recently, Managing Director of the Guyana Foundation Anthony Autar said a suicide a hotline was urgently needed since its existence could prevent the loss of many lives. He said the country is already struggling with far too few psychologists and mental health counsellors and a suicide hotline could be a mechanism that would turn people from suicide. He believed that it is something that the government needs to address.
“The way we view the situation is human resource is the most valuable resource in this country and every act of suicide is an irreplaceable loss that we can never get back and we hope that all stakeholders would wake up and see this,” he said.
Number one
At present, Guyana has been listed as the country with the highest suicide rate in the world in 2012; with an overall rate of 44.2 cases per 100,000 individuals. Guyana ranking comes even though there was an 8.5% decline in the country’s suicide rate between 2000 and 2012, suggesting that local efforts to combat suicide have simply not kept up with that of other countries.
Psychiatrist Dr Bhiro Harry, at a recent discussion on suicide, stated that Guyana’s ranking was not a “position to be proud of” and that over 200 Guyanese die every year from suicide. He said a team of experts are reviewing Guyana’s previous National Mental Health Strategy and are looking at where they failed. “We came up with some interesting findings,” he said, adding that they were using it to shape their new mental health plan.
Dr Harry said Guyana’s data collection on suicide statistics was not the best and they are looking to address it. He said what they have noticed is that the age group between 12 and 25 appears to be the most affected group while Region 6 continues to rank as the region with the highest number of suicide cases, followed closely by regions 4, 3, 2 and 5 in that order, with a greater occurrence among Indian Guyanese. He said they have also noticed that more females attempt suicide than males, while more men die from suicide and they are considering reasons behind it.
Meanwhile, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon said the government has taken offence at the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) report which named Guyana as the country with the worst suicide rate in the world. He said the international organisations’ statistics are “widely over-estimated,” charging that the stats were inconsistent with data collected from national organisations, particularly the Ministry of Health and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Guyana Police Force.
He said the method used to calculate the number of suicide deaths in the country does not accurately reflect what has been recorded by the police force and the ministry.
“They have a statistical tool or tools that they use to convert our data into numbers that allow them to compare and contrast Guyana with other countries and therein lies the difficulties,” he said, adding that cabinet will be looking into the accuracy of the WHO and PAHO report. “Cabinet has agreed that efforts must be made to effect the necessary reconciliation. There must be some mechanism to satisfy Guyana and the Cabinet about the accuracy of these reports and efforts are being made to do that,” he said.
