Would assistance be better than trying to abolish?

"I have lived life with suicidal ideation and more than one failed suicidal attempt," wrote Akhileshwar Sahay as he made an emotional heartfelt plea for a program to reduce the rate of suicides in India to zero. Mr Sahay is a director at Feedback Ventures, an infrastructure firm in Gurgaon and his article contains a bit of corporate jargon, such as "paradigm shift" and "eschewing incrementalism in favour of radical transformational, and systemic preventive agenda", but is sincere because he is a patient of bipolar disorder. He also has a history of hallucinations, which are more common in psychotic disorders. Patients with bipolar disorders swing between a state of mania, during which they are hyperactive and irritable, and depression, during which they have no energy and may commit suicide. It is not uncommon and many prominent people suffer from it. Sahay cites studies by Dr Vikram Patel, one of which show that 1,87,000 people, aged 15 years and older, committed suicide in India in 2010, of which 1,15,000 were men and 72,000 were women. He gives a breakdown of figures and calculates that India could save at least Rs 250 billion if suicides are totally prevented. Every patient attending the Henry Ford family clinic with medical conditions, in Detroit, in the US, were asked about suicidal thoughts and given therapy. Suicide was completely abolished among these patients in 2008 and 2009. It would be impossible to translate this success to the entire population, especially in a country like India with a population of 1.30 billion. Perhaps, we can ask a different question. Why don't more people commit suicide in India, where everyday is a grind, essential services are not available for most and a brutal rapacious government makes life precarious? Healthcare is not available for the vast majority of people, and private care is extremely expensive. Most of us would surely welcome some form of assisted suicide in comfort rather than suffering an excruciating death for lack of money. Sex workers are afraid of visiting hospitals for fear of discrimination, so suffer in silence. With no social safety net the pressure on children to qualify for entrance into professional institutes is so extreme that one student commits suicide every hour. More than 20,000 housewives have been killing themselves every year since 1997. Curiously, suicide rates are lowest where women live in large families and highest in high income nuclear families. Clearly, the stress of earning enough to be able to afford the luxuries that are now available in India are proving too much for some. 7.5% of people suffer mental health problems. To improve their health we have to improve the whole nation.