Suicide-hati

The historic city of Guwahati looks like heading for a change of name. Known in the epics and Puranas as Pragjyotishpura and Kamarupa-nagara, it was in this city that Brahma, the Hindu god of creation is said to have created the planets and stars. The Navagraha temple atop the Chitrachal hills bears testimony to this. It was at Saraighat on the Brahmaputra that the Assamese under the command of Lachit Barphukan had inflicted the most disastrous defeat on the mighty Mughal army. It was the numerous caves – Guha in Assamese – which had led to the evolution of the name from Guha-hati to Guwahati. According to some, it was the cluster of villages – hati – growing guwa or betelnuts which gave this city its present name. Assam's history is replete with numerous landmark incidents which took place here. Yet, going by what Joint Commissioner of City Police Partha Sarathi Mahanta said on Saturday, it looks like Guwahati is really heading for a name change. According to Mahanta, the number of suicide cases in the city has sky-rocketed in the past decade. While the police had recorded 222 suicide cases in Guwahati during 2013, the figure jumped to 241 in 2015, then to 29 in 2017 and then nearly doubled to become 414 in the first six months of the current year. What is most worrisome is that the Joint Commissioner of Police has expressed the apprehension that the number of suicides in the city may continue to rise in the remaining part of the current year. If the incidents continue to occur at the current rate, Guwahati probably will record no less than 800 suicide cases in 2022. While the rapid and alarming increase in the number of suicide cases during the lockdowns since 2020 has become a global phenomenon, the Joint Commissioner of Police however has reportedly refrained from arriving at any conclusion regarding the increasing trend of such cases in the Assam capital. Looking at the National Crime Research Bureau report of 2020 one finds that each suicide is a personal tragedy that prematurely takes the life of an individual and has a continuing ripple effect, affecting the lives of families, friends and communities. Every year, more than one lakh people commit suicide in India. There are various causes of suicides, like professional/career problems, sense of isolation, abuse, violence, family problems, mental disorders, addiction to alcohol, financial loss, chronic pain etc. It is, however, the job of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health experts to delve into the situation and conduct a detailed study in order to identify the possible reasons which had pushed certain individuals to such a mental state warranting taking one's own life.