Remembering September as Suicide Prevention Month)
Eric Loo
“During the school holidays Ryan worked every day except Sunday. Last Tuesday he worked about twelve hours and came home tired. We were not home … cold dinner had been left on the table but Ryan didn’t eat it.
“He went out late at night with a close friend to the nearby hill top lookout, his usual retreat. It was very cold, dark and bleak. Ryan’s future seemed uncertain. He was very weary, profoundly sad. Life seemed unpredictable and miserable for Ryan (name changed). The HSC was looming. He had no particular plans for after the exams.
“Ryan’s tired brain was overwhelmed with despair. For a moment he was blinded from reason and it only took a moment to climb that low rail and leap. Within seconds he was taken from us. He is now freed from his suffering and present with God. We miss him so much. But we will meet him again in heaven.”
A grieving mother, burdened by guilt, attributed her 17-year-old son’s suicide to depression and ‘heavy metal music’. Or, was it the relentless schoolwork? Pressure to excel? A broken relationship?
The triggers of suicide are hard to pin down even as the World Health Organisations provides a repository of resources to explain the probable causes, and strategies to stem the prevalence of a mental illness that has torn apart families and long-affected loved ones left behind.
According to the WHO estimates men aged between 15-34 are on average three times more likely to suicide than women. Highest suicide rates were recorded in Eastern Europe, and the lowest in Latin America. In Australia, the Bureau of Statistics shows that men aged between 15-24 are more likely to die from suicide than other causes.
The Malaysian Psychiatric Association website attributes suicide to cultural and religious factors. Lately, the dire consequence of social media trolls is also cited as a probable cause.
MPA notes that the majority of suicides due to depression are generally not diagnosed early because “their symptoms are not recognised; they are misdiagnosed and wrongly treated; doctors feel their symptoms are due to ‘personal weakness’ ” or the patients tend to “hide their depressive symptoms”.
The stigma attached to suicides has led to under-reporting in Malaysia, which undermines the reliability of the data collected by the National Suicide Registry. Its last report was in 2009 where it showed a rate of 1.3 suicides per 100,000. The actual rate could be higher.
Depression is ignored, unrecognized, or denied by family members, although a Ministry of Health survey in 2017 found that depression, anxiety and stress factors prevailed among 18.3 per cent, 39.7 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively in school-going adolescents aged 13-17 years old. The same survey also showed a prevalence of suicidal thoughts among adolescents was 10.0 per cent, an increase from 7.9 per cent in 2012.
Suicide is still considered a crime under Section 309 of the Malaysian Penal Code, Hence, suicide is usually reported as accidental or undetermined death when they are not medically inspected or certified.
However, the penal code, an archaic law carried over from British colonial rule (suicide was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1961), is rarely enforced even as there has been persistent call on the Malaysian government to decriminalise suicide in the country.
###