The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Surge in suicide deaths in State

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Wednesday, Sep 22, 2010
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Surge in suicide deaths in State

Swathi. V

A.P. second in country in suicides, according to NCRB data for 2008

HYDERABAD: A definite increase marks the registers of State Crime Records Bureau this year in the number of people getting disillusioned with self and the world and taking the final step to precipitate the inevitable finish-line of human existence.

The number of reported deaths of suicide in the State reached nearly 8,000 this year up to June, as compared to the previous year's 13,827 for a whole year. And the reported cases are too few!

Andhra Pradesh stood second in the country in terms of the percentage share of deaths due to suicide according to the National Crime Records Bureau's data for 2008. Even the rate of suicides, at 17.4 per lakh of population, is greater than the national average. Studies have proven that suicides are the third major cause of death among people aged between 15 and 44 years.

Debilitating trends

The fact that most of these suicides are by people between 18 and 30 years of age reveals a very disturbing inadequacy of the community in providing psycho-sociological support systems for its vulnerable young. To put it in the words of the pre-eminent sociologist Shasheej Hegde from the University of Hyderabad, the rate of suicides is a pointer to certain debilitating trends in the society.

“The tendency to commit suicide hinges on the level of the individual's integration within the group. The lesser the integration, the more is the tendency to get dejected. The more individualised a country gets, the greater is the tendency to suicide,” he says and postulates growing individuation as a common thread across various suicides. Even farmers' suicides owing to increasingly individuated economic activity can be subsumed into this analysis, he says.

Network important

“I keep telling my students that an individual needs nest as well as network, symbolised respectively by family or community and extended groups. Here we have nests crumbling and networks becoming impersonal,” Prof. Hegde says.

Caste and religion as crucial variables in forming social networks are thinning down in civil social sphere though consolidating at political level, he says. With no alternative networks taking off from there, it is no wonder that more and more people are feeling fatally dejected.

Those from underprivileged sections and rural background are more prone because they have no support structures to leverage on.

M. Gowri Devi, professor of psychiatry, locates the suicidal tendencies also in the levels of neurotransmitters within the brain.

It has been proven that the decreased amounts of serotonin causes the suicidal thoughts in majority of the victims. At some level, the reasons are genetic, and suicides have been shown as running in the families, she says. However, the effect of external influences on the brain is yet to be analysed.

Suicidal tendencies are found to be very less in destitute people, urchins, sex workers and transgenders though they remain banished from the larger society.

The reason can be located in their struggle against adversities, and the cohesion within the group, say both the experts.

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