The issue of mental health and suicide prevention

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by Mr. Umair Gondal, a Pakistani undergraduate foreign medical student,now in Second Year at International School of Medicine – International University of Kyrgyzstan. He is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Associations (IFMSA), cordial partner of The Sting. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writers and do not necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, nor The European Sting’s one.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) one in hundred deaths is by suicide. One person dies every 40 seconds. Basically, suicide is directly concerned to mental health issues, depression, alcohol abuse and the strongest risk factor use for suicide would be a previous suicide attempt. More than 800000 people die every year from suicide.

According to the survery suicide risk is higher in older males and risk of attempted suicides is highest in younger females. A recent report highlighted the main complexity of suicide like a mental health trauma maybe a contributing factor for many persons the report notes that “Many of the factors contribute to suicide among those with and without known mental health conditions” A relationship problem was the top factor to suicide

Also about fifty four percent of people who died by suicide didn’t have a known mental health condition, but many of them were dealing with mental health challenges that had not been cured or not known to those nearby them. Some of the warning signs are:

Making compliments about being helpless,hopeless and lonely.
Increased Drug Abuse.
Reckless Behavior.
Mood Changes.
Talking about being alone.
Taking about commiting suicides.

Protective Factors:

There are many much people which are suffering from such a kind of trauma and mental health issues including Majorly domestic Issues, depression, work burden, relationships and child abuse is also one of the biggest factor of this age which is leading our teenagers to commit suicide. Nowadays we are also seeing the LGBT friendly persons but it’s totally leading our society to mental illness because at school level it is much increasing and the guys who are having rape at the age 9 or 10 years how much trauma they would have to bear until they commit suicide.

So some of our National Policies are also in favour of these activities which should be strictly prohibited. Remember it is a universal rule that “Negative Charges attract each other not the same charges” so if someone goes against the Natural definitely he would have to face problems.

What we can do, what the national policies can do and how our young generation can play a key role here is just summarized in some simple words and in a very convenient way which would be very helpful for such kind of quieries and issues to prevent suicides upto a great level.

• First of all “Ask” Are you thinking of commiting suicide or killing yourself? (Many of you may be hesitant to ask, but this is helpful).

• Keep these types of sensitive people safe and reduce access to fatal things.

• Government should arrange some seminars and tables at school, college and university level.

• Government should make special psychiatric hospitals which would help them in this regard.

• We should listen carefully and acknowledge the feelings of such a person.

• Always stay connected with each other and spend a lot of time with them.Go with them to parks and make them realize how much worth life is.

About the author

This article was exclusively written for “The European Sting ” magazine by Mr. Umair Gondal, a Pakistani undergraduate foreign medical student,now in Second Year at International School of Medicine – International University of Kyrgyzstan. He is affiliated with the International Federation of Medical Students Association (IFMSA), cordial partner of the sting. He has been very inclined towards achieving his academic goals and was one of the top scorers through his academic life. The opinions expressed in this piece belong strictly to the writer’s and don’t necessarily reflect IFMSA’s view on the topic, not the European Sting’s one.