Life Interrupted

In India we tend to have a fatalistic attitude towards suicide, tending to believe that nothing can be done to prevent it, focusing only on the politically volatile issue of farmer suicides, or periodically, when there is a death by suicide of a prominent personality or suicides in vulnerable groups (for example, students especially after board exam results), there is a hue and cry in the popular press with opinion makers demanding immediate action. The resulting knee-jerk reaction from policy makers is to offer some immediate solutions (appointing counsellors in colleges, etc.) which have little evidence of success. After a while, everyone forgets the issue, until the next such event and the cycle repeats itself. Why should you care? Because a disproportionate number of young Indians die by suicide and these are preventable deaths. This book aims to present evidence-based strategies to tackle suicide, using interviews, case studies, and conversations that lay readers can make sense of, while proposing an outline of steps that policy makers, journalists and key stakeholder groups can collaborate on to provide better solutions and save precious lives in India.