Suicide In The Context Of Guyana

By Annan Boodram

News Americas, BRONX, NY, Fri. Aug. 12, 2016: By now the general consensus globally is that suicide prevention is a holistic endeavor and that any missing link in the chain will certainly significantly impede efforts to save lives.

Within this context the work done in schools and, among the 15-25 age group in the South American nation of Guyana, must be supplemented so that the endeavors reach every school, at least high schools and youth entity.

Thus The Caribbean Voice (TCV) urges the Guyana Ministry of Education, in collaboration with other stakeholders, to follow the lead of the New Jersey Humanitarian Mission (NJASM) and organize a nationwide campaign to reach remaining schools with workshops on self esteem, self acceptance, self forgiveness and dealing with stressors.

Feedback from workshops held in Guyana by NJASM and TCV (in collaboration with our partners, especially GIVE Foundation), have been offered disturbing feedback, as across the board we have learnt that young people suffer from sexual abuse and to a lesser extent physical abuse and, as well, many have suffered/suffer from depression while some have even been suicidal.
suicide

Suicide has become a major public health problem in Guyana and this country has been ranked as having the highest rate of suicide in the world – that is, 44 persons per 100,000 – and vastly outranks countries such as Belgium (15/100,000) and The Netherlands (9/100,000),  for example. This unfavourable ranking should be a cause for great alarm as even Trinidad and Tobago (14/100,000) with a similar ethnic make-up as Guyana is ranked at #41, with only neighbouring Suriname, ranked #6 (29/100,000) sharing the dubious honour of being in the top ten countries with the highest suicide rates in the world.

If depression is a mental health problem, then this country must be in dire need of treatment. If depression can be spread from parents to children, then the sense of hopelessness and lack of recourse to practical solutions that are characteristic of this society may be responsible in some measure for the high rate of suicides in Guyana.