What is the issue?
- A senior IPS officer had recently committed suicide, due to depression caused by a prolonged chronic illness.
- Monitoring the mental health of patients is vital to avoid such episodes.
What is the state of patients committing suicide?
- Family problems account for the most number of suicides in India, accounting for 27.6% of all suicides.
- This is followed by illness driven suicides which stands at a whopping 15.8%.
- Hence, sad moods or odd behaviour should not be brushed aside as a “normal reaction” to being ill and should be seen as possible symptoms of depression.
- Doctors and family need to keep a close eye on symptoms of depression in the patients who happen suffer chronic or long lasting disorders/diseases.
What drives suicides?
- Most patients who commit suicide aren’t at their terminal stage but the ones who can’t mentally cope with the initial stages of the illness.
- Patients suffering from a prolonged illness are affected as they miss out on a lot in life, which is taken for granted by others.
- They have to make many lifestyle changes and simultaneously cope with the side effects of medication.
- These are highly stressful for a vast majority of the patients as they find it difficult to make peace with their new situation.
- In addition to this, some also have to go through eternal chronic pain, which is the main reason that drives them to suicide.
How do we address this problem?
- While illness is what causes depression usually, in considerable number of cases, it is the medication that creates depression.
- Continuous counselling and keeping a close eye on depressive symptoms in patients is the key to preventing illness driven suicides.
- Counselling should not be isolated as a psychiatric measure, but should rather be incorporated to an extent within the conventional treatment centres.
- All physicians and medical staff treating such patients need to be able to pick up depressive symptoms through a patient’s mannerism.
Source: The Hindu
