At Sorrow's Summit

The suicide crisis among the young and older adult populations needs specific targeted interventions

- Soumitra Pathare, Lakshmi Vijaykumar, Shubhda Sharma

SUICIDES in India have quietly become a public health emergency, especially in the last few years. In 2022, India's suicide rate rose to 12.4 per 100,000 population, up from 12.0 in 2021, marking a 4.2 per cent increase in the number of suicides—from 164,033 to 170,924.

This is the highest suicide rate since records began more than 60 years ago. During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020), suicide deaths rose by 10 per cent—from 139,123 in 2019 to 153,052 in 2020. Compared to 2019, there was a 22 per cent increase in the number of deaths by suicide in four years until 2022—data for 2023 onwards has not yet been released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). In response, the government finally launched the long overdue National Suicide Prevention Strategy (NSPS) in 2022 that aims to reduce the suicide mortality in the country by 10 per cent by 2030. However, without a significant effort by all stakeholders across sectors, including health, as well as allocation of substantial resources by the government, this goal is impossible to achieve.

Suicides by children under 18 years of age are of particular concern. There has been a worrying increase in children’s suicides in recent years. For the past three years consistently, there have been more than 10,000 child suicides each year. It has also been observed that below the age of 18, girls are more likely to die by suicide than boys. While suicide can occur at any point in an individual's lifetime, each phase brings with it distinct challenges. For instance, adolescents and young children may struggle with academic challenges or neglectful or abusive parenting, while many older adults grapple with social isolation and coming to terms with physical limitations.