Depression takes young lives in Agra
VIJAY UPADHYAY
AGRA. The Taj Mahal may have given Agra the title of the “city of love”, but even in this city of love, the grim reaper is making a good harvest of souls with the number of suicidal youngsters rocketing skywards in the past two months.
According to a conservative estimate, these days, Agra is facing the appalling toll of at least one youngster committing suicide daily. In the past one month alone, more than two dozen young people attempted suicide in Agra and even August opened at a tragic note with seven youth committing suicide in seven days, majority of them males between 18-28 years of age, belonging to respectable families of urban background and in almost all these cases, “future insecurity” came out as the primary reason.
May it be Pradeep, the son of an IRS official; Nikhil, the son of a police officer; Manoj Mani, an engineering student or Sonvir, the son of a humble farmer, the reason behind these tragic deaths has been the same – failure linked depression and the feeling of insecurity about the future in the competitive world of today.
A study released by the Agra Mental Asylum recently has indicated that the young population of Agra, especially the urban parts, had developed a suicidal tendency due to the uncertainty of employment and education in the city. In the project, 405 suicides that took place in the year 2002 were studied and the reasons for these suicides were analyzed, which revealed a shocking fact that 62 percent of the suicidal cases were youngsters who believed that they had failed in their life goals.
According to Dr. Sudhir Kumar, Director, Agra Mental Asylum, while the rate of suicides was increasing in the entire country, the suicidal tendency in Agra had grown by more than double in the past 10 years and the reason was that the tolerance among the Agra youth to cope up with the sudden changes in their lifestyle had reduced drastically and the resultant depression was taking its toll. In fact, he said, suicide was the third leading cause of death among the youngsters of Agra with the age of 25 becoming the most critical period of their life.
He said that earlier, the most common means of committing suicide among the youth was consuming Sulphos tablets or jumping before moving trains but lately, with firearms becoming easily available, shooting oneself in the head had become a sure shot way among the youth to be freed from all worldly troubles like in the case of Pradeep and Nikhil, both of whom used their father’s pistols to end their lives after failing in the examinations.
According to the director, there were at least ten patients admitted in the Agra Mental Asylum who had developed chronic suicidal instincts while every day, atleast 4-5 patients arrived with a suicidal intention in the Out Patients Department of the hospital while seventy-five percent of suicidal patients were not even identified.
He said that to obliterate this mania, the Agra Mental Aylum was in the process of establishing a help line to help the youth to get rid of their suicidal instincts but it had been observed that the tele-counseling concept imported from the metropolitan cities was not that effective in C-class cities like Agra and here, family was the key in solving this problem.
He said that in the fast-track life of today, the number of youngsters undergoing mental and emotional disturbances was extremely high but not every one actually needed the help of a psychiatrist. Most of the times, the presence of a caring and understanding individual who could provide the required emotional support and empathy was all that was needed for the youngster to come out of this depression.
He said that the colleges and educational institutions were also to be blamed for the growing number of youngsters committing suicides due to failure in examinations. He said that the colleges were responsible to provide adequate psychiatric counseling to the students and ideally, a counseling session should be held every month in the institutions but it was a fact that no educational institution in Agra had created the post of a counselor and this was a very dangerous aspect of education.
According to Dr. Kumar, the Agra Mental Asylum had just 10 full-time psychiatrists over almost 650 mental patients but still, it was willing to help out by providing a counselor to the institutions who could hold at least one session per month in the colleges, if invited.
(UNITED NEWS NETWORK)
AGRA. The Taj Mahal may have given Agra the title of the “city of love”, but even in this city of love, the grim reaper is making a good harvest of souls with the number of suicidal youngsters rocketing skywards in the past two months.
According to a conservative estimate, these days, Agra is facing the appalling toll of at least one youngster committing suicide daily. In the past one month alone, more than two dozen young people attempted suicide in Agra and even August opened at a tragic note with seven youth committing suicide in seven days, majority of them males between 18-28 years of age, belonging to respectable families of urban background and in almost all these cases, “future insecurity” came out as the primary reason.
May it be Pradeep, the son of an IRS official; Nikhil, the son of a police officer; Manoj Mani, an engineering student or Sonvir, the son of a humble farmer, the reason behind these tragic deaths has been the same – failure linked depression and the feeling of insecurity about the future in the competitive world of today.
A study released by the Agra Mental Asylum recently has indicated that the young population of Agra, especially the urban parts, had developed a suicidal tendency due to the uncertainty of employment and education in the city. In the project, 405 suicides that took place in the year 2002 were studied and the reasons for these suicides were analyzed, which revealed a shocking fact that 62 percent of the suicidal cases were youngsters who believed that they had failed in their life goals.
According to Dr. Sudhir Kumar, Director, Agra Mental Asylum, while the rate of suicides was increasing in the entire country, the suicidal tendency in Agra had grown by more than double in the past 10 years and the reason was that the tolerance among the Agra youth to cope up with the sudden changes in their lifestyle had reduced drastically and the resultant depression was taking its toll. In fact, he said, suicide was the third leading cause of death among the youngsters of Agra with the age of 25 becoming the most critical period of their life.
He said that earlier, the most common means of committing suicide among the youth was consuming Sulphos tablets or jumping before moving trains but lately, with firearms becoming easily available, shooting oneself in the head had become a sure shot way among the youth to be freed from all worldly troubles like in the case of Pradeep and Nikhil, both of whom used their father’s pistols to end their lives after failing in the examinations.
According to the director, there were at least ten patients admitted in the Agra Mental Asylum who had developed chronic suicidal instincts while every day, atleast 4-5 patients arrived with a suicidal intention in the Out Patients Department of the hospital while seventy-five percent of suicidal patients were not even identified.
He said that to obliterate this mania, the Agra Mental Aylum was in the process of establishing a help line to help the youth to get rid of their suicidal instincts but it had been observed that the tele-counseling concept imported from the metropolitan cities was not that effective in C-class cities like Agra and here, family was the key in solving this problem.
He said that in the fast-track life of today, the number of youngsters undergoing mental and emotional disturbances was extremely high but not every one actually needed the help of a psychiatrist. Most of the times, the presence of a caring and understanding individual who could provide the required emotional support and empathy was all that was needed for the youngster to come out of this depression.
He said that the colleges and educational institutions were also to be blamed for the growing number of youngsters committing suicides due to failure in examinations. He said that the colleges were responsible to provide adequate psychiatric counseling to the students and ideally, a counseling session should be held every month in the institutions but it was a fact that no educational institution in Agra had created the post of a counselor and this was a very dangerous aspect of education.
According to Dr. Kumar, the Agra Mental Asylum had just 10 full-time psychiatrists over almost 650 mental patients but still, it was willing to help out by providing a counselor to the institutions who could hold at least one session per month in the colleges, if invited.
(UNITED NEWS NETWORK)
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