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Sunday December 28, 2008

Suicide diaries

STRAY THOUGHTS
By A. ASOHAN


What kind of a caring society jails its troubled teens and depressed denizens?

SOMETIME in the last century, my 21st birthday was marked by the fact that I had just been evicted and was also in the process of being deregistered from university.

I was squatting at a friend’s place. To celebrate my dark depression, in the wee hours of the morning I locked myself in the washroom and proceeded to saw away at my wrists with the only implement I could find: A butter knife.

I wasn’t exactly sober, mind you.

Then I suddenly realised that a dead body in the washroom would have gotten my friend, Simone, in trouble, and I just couldn’t do that to somebody who was keeping me alive. I stopped, and the only reminder I have of that stupid moment of indulgence and self-pity were the scars that took a long time to heal.

Fast-forward to more than two decades later, and I went through another period of dark depression. Suicide never entered my mind – I had two daughters depending on me! But one night I woke up to find myself half-poised over the balcony of the 29th-storey apartment I was staying in at the time, with no idea how I got there. I knew then I needed professional help.

In either of the cases, any small push could have sent me over the edge. Imagine then if some concerned person had realised what I was up to and called the police. And the police, in keeping with the letter of the law, would have proceeded to arrest me and charge me with attempted suicide. The embarrassment and feeling of abandonment would have been sufficient for any already vulnerable person to bid adieu to the cruel world.

So it was with a great degree of disbelief that I read the news about a 16-year-old girl being charged with attempted suicide in Kuala Terengganu. According to an English-language daily, she was “alleged to have committed the offence” on Nov 21 after a quarrel with her boyfriend. She was charged in the Court for Children earlier this month. She was unrepresented and only accompanied by her mother. The court set Jan 22 next year for mention.

The newspaper noted this was the first time in many years that anyone has been charged with attempted suicide, then added that the measure was being taken “after a spate of suicides and attempted suicides in recent weeks,” quoting Deputy Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Ismail Omar as saying that police were considering enforcing the law.

Laws against suicide are an odd duck. They usually fail at any test of logic. Are they supposed to act as a deterrent? Do you think the threat of jail and a fine would deter somebody who is so miserable and torn up inside that the thought of non-existence – or eternal damnation, depending on your point of view – seems a viable option?

And you can only punish those who have failed – the ones who succeed in their attempt are beyond the long arm of the law. Are these laws supposed to discourage people from contemplating suicide? If you think that a mere law can do that, you need to spend more time talking to people who have given up on life.

In 2004, the International Medical University in Kuala Lumpur did a survey of more than 4,000 adolescent students and found that 7% (312) had seriously considered suicide – furthermore, 4.6% had attempted suicide at least once during the 12 months preceding the survey.

Suicide and attempted suicide rates have risen in Malaysia. The Malaysian Psychiatric Association (MPA) in its newsletter in 2006 quoted the then Health Minister Datuk Dr Chua Soi Lek as saying that in five to 10 years, suicide would be the country’s second biggest cause of death after cardiovascular disease. The MPA also said about seven people attempt suicide daily in Malaysia.

The young are especially vulnerable – no surprises there. We older folk like to think that young people these days are spoilt and have it good. They don’t have to walk five miles to school every day, evading crocodiles along the way, yadda-yadda.

The fact is, we have very little idea of the pressures they have to face – pressure from society, family and the mass media. They’re told that they have to be good people, while the signs around them indicate that the corrupt and powerful succeed more easily. They’re told to wait until they’re older before they have relationships with members of the opposite sex, while they’re being bombarded by sexually titillating messages every minute – or get to watch political leaders committing adultery on DVD or the Internet.

They have to work harder, study more and do better in their exams because it’s a damned competitive world out there. They have to get that degree that, these days, cannot even assure them of a job. They’re told they’re the leaders of the future, but are not allowed a voice.

Let’s not even bother with the fact that more of them come from broken families these days, and that it’s not really safe for them to walk the streets anymore. The cops just don’t have the manpower to fight crime all the time, what with having to break up cycling campaigns, candle-light vigils, and putting depressed teens in jail.

A few months ago, I wrote in this column about how our police need to be more sensitive to distraught parents who fear for their children. They also need to be just as sensitive to the children themselves.

Perhaps the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry can start a programme to create a cadre of trained counsellors and family psychology professionals who would be at hand to assist the police in such matters. If a parent goes to the police station to lodge a missing child report, if the cops rescue a distraught teen, when it comes to rape and other crimes of violence against women and children, these professionals can be called in immediately to assist the cops.

We don’t want cops who are merely clean and efficient – we want a body of consummate professionals who will serve and protect us.

And as for the rest of us, we’ve got to remove the stigma from mental health problems and realise that many people need professional help these days, and there’s nothing wrong with seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist to get it.

A. Asohan, New Media Editor at The Star, would like to dedicate this column to his former housemate MY, who succumbed to her problems and whom he wishes he had known better.

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