In two days’ time researchers studying suicidal behaviour will launch a mobile phone app that seeks to pool information on mental health and build an open data source for mental health professionals tasked with framing more effective strategies.
Considered the largest democratic mental health survey in the world, with the aim of collecting over 70 million emotions, the app ‘How is the World Feeling?’ would be accessible to Android and iOS from October 10. With a compatible device, mobile phone users in this country can contribute to the research findings.
Stakeholders in Guyana can follow this project and its development as we look to reduce suicide rates here and the substantial burden associated with it. The team behind the initiative, Spur Projects, has said that access to such a large, international set of data means unprecedented understanding of mental health across an extremely vast range of demographics and geography, which could be useful to professionals and stakeholders across the globe.
It remains to be seen whether this innovation will result in usable and dependable data which can be utilised by authorities to aid in the treatment of depression as a means of reducing suicide.
Suicide has become a major public health problem in Guyana and this country has been ranked as having the highest rate of suicide in the world – that is, 44 persons per 100,000 – and vastly outranks countries such as Belgium (15/100,000) and The Netherlands (9/100,000), for example. This unfavourable ranking should be a cause for great alarm as even Trinidad and Tobago (14/100,000) with a similar ethnic make-up as Guyana is ranked at #41, with only neighbouring Suriname, ranked #6 (29/100,000) sharing the dubious honour of being in the top ten countries with the highest suicide rates in the world.
The problem of suicide in Guyana has been an open secret for many years, and because of the ethnic make-up and politicization of our country, an effective dialogue on the subject by the relevant social, governmental, and other stakeholder bodies has in the past proved challenging. Despite many well-meaning interventions, mainly in the form of public education, raising awareness, hotlines, etc, there seems to have been no major inroads made towards reducing suicide in Guyana.
Suicide is largely considered to be a complex phenomenon with varying levels of intervention being required to prevent it, but one thing is clear about our situation in Guyana: we are yet to determine what a sustainable preventive programme looks like, and are even further away from its implementation.
Clearly, the usual discussions about building a multi-sectoral consensus backed by strong political will are needed, but the question is when are we going to move beyond the dialogues and into the action phase as articulated earlier this year by President David Granger. While addressing a National Stakeholders’ Conference on Suicide Prevention in April the President emphasized that action, not talk, is needed to curb suicides.
But it is more than just action – it is focused action and a commitment from our leadership to explore all available measures, taking into consideration our financial and human resource constraints. In short, attitude is critical to the kind of responses we build into the system.
It was only a few years ago that then minister of health Dr Bheri Ramsaran faced the citizenry when suicide rates were climbing under his watch to say that the suicide hotline, which was operational at the time, was a failure. Ramsaran cited the limited number of calls to the hotline as a basis for his conclusion, and established his rationale for subsequently discontinuing it. This precipitate action on the part of the then subject minister points to the importance of having the right attitude and focus at all levels if positive inroads are to be made in combating suicide in Guyana.
Fortunately, the hotline has now been reintroduced, as well as social media avenues, such as Facebook, BBM, Twitter and Whatsapp, in addition to which a number of non-governmental organisations have been working to sensitise communities to the issue and campaign for a holistic approach to be taken to addressing suicide. They have also called for the decriminalizing of attempted suicide, as obtains in most developed countries, but so far the government has not moved on this.
Other non-traditional approaches to suicide and its seeming popularity in nearly a third of the countries in the world need to be considered as well. For example, the issue of socialization and acceptability whereby individuals in this country are exposed to positive or negative definitions of suicide should be examined. We know that many books and movies paint a romantic picture of suicide (Romeo and Juliet), as well as associating it with bravery (as in the case of the soldier taking on a suicide mission). While the motivations may differ, suicide is suicide, and the time may have long arrived for us to make a greater effort at addressing the glamorisation and romanticising of suicide in popular culture, as well as generally.
Research has also shown that the choice of suicide can be influenced by the individual’s level of stress and ability to cope with such stress. Those who suffer from high levels of stress may strive to find a solution to their problems, yet may not be able to find legitimate solutions, partly because of the (sometimes perceived) severity of their problems. This brings us to the question of hope. Suicide usually follows a loss of hope in the individual – a loss of hope in the resolution of a problem, the severity of which is usually dependent on the perception and outlook of the individual.
If depression is a mental health problem, then this country must be in dire need of treatment. If depression can be spread from parents to children, then the sense of hopelessness and lack of recourse to practical solutions that are characteristic of this society may be responsible in some measure for the high rate of suicides in Guyana.
It might be useful to consider the recourse environment that exists here at all levels ‒ the criminal justice system, the education system, the medical system, the civil justice system ‒ and in improving the recourse environment, we just might increase the level of hope in our citizens.