World Suicide Prevention Day 2019: Tips To Manage Impulsive Suicidal Thoughts

2019 Suicide Prevention: Stress and anger make people take impulsive decisions about committing suicide

World Suicide Prevention Day 2019 is observed on September 10. The day is meant to raise awareness about suicide prevention and the consequences of failed suicide attempts. World Suicide Prevention Day is basically tell people that committing suicide is never the solution, and dealing with problems maturely is the only way to end them. 

India today accounts for a large and growing share of suicides in the world. Today, we make up for over a third of the world's annual female suicides and nearly a fourth of male suicides. And since 1990, this rate has been growing faster than the world's suicide average*.

The reasons for anyone taking such an extreme step vary from personal, financial, professional, mental issues. We as doctors, would always like to highlight suicide is never the solution. We advocate for suicide being a permanent phenomenon to deal with a temporary problem, and for temporary problem one should not go for a permanent decision. If one faces the problem head on, only then the problem will come to a solution and situation will be better in few days.

Suicide prevention: Do not give away to stress and problems and deal with your problems head on, rather than thinking of suicide
Photo Credit: iStock

One common thing that we have seen in the cases of committing suicide are two different outcomes. One, a complete suicide and the other, incomplete or unsuccessful suicide. Research tells us that out of 100 suicidal attempts, there is only one attempt that is unfortunately successful. The rest cases come under para suicide cases.

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World Suicide Prevention Day: What is para suicide?

Para suicide is an attempt to suicide but the person doesn't die of it. The key to understand here is that suicide attempts only adds up to the problem, instead of getting any better. Para attempts incur huge emergency services and medical bills, they face medico-legal team probes, police and relatives' probes, which leads to psychological embarrassment for the family as well.

In case of that one completed attempt, it's only a permanent loss of one's life and all the hard work that person would have done to a productive life, till that moment, will also be lost. The trauma and the sadness the family members go through adds to the loss of life. But the problem remains.

Studies also suggest that impulse is a primary reason for a suicide attempt. There are many patients admitted in emergency room, owing to consuming poison to end their life. However, when they talk to us later, they tell us that they did not want to die but drank poison in fit of anger. Such instances are increasing in numbers every day. People are taking impulsive decisions of attempting to suicide because of stress, anger, ego tussles in their day-to-day life. We always counsel during such cases, that one should get to talk about their problem to people around them rather than taking such an impulsive decision. It could be your husband, wife, father, mother, a friend or even a counsellor to speak about the problem instead of keeping it inside. Also, such problems should be addressed rationally and its always best to leave out the emotional aspect from the conversation. So if, there is anger as an emotion in the conversation, then the other person will automatically reply in anger.

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Here are some tips to manage impulsive suicidal thoughts, leading to prevention of suicide:

1. Take your mind off and rest by counting 1 to 10 backwards
2. Think that is it important to say or react
3. If you feel angry, avoid the situation but face it again after 10 minutes
4. Take help of colleagues and friends to deal with it
5. Consult psychiatrist/clinical psychologist
6. Eat healthy nutritive diet
7. Take sound sleep
8. Do regular exercise
9. Stay alive and stay healthy

Regular exercise and healthy lifestyle can keep suicidal thoughts at bay
Photo Credit: iStock

(*2016 Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors (GBD 2016), a worldwide database of health indicators.)

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(Dr Sagar Lavania, Consultant and Head of Department, Psychiatry and Mental Health Nayati Healthcare)

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