A senior IPS officer had recently committed suicide, due to depression caused by a prolonged chronic illness.
Monitoring the mental health of patients is vital to avoid such episodes.
What is the state of patients committing suicide?
Family problems account for the most number of suicides in India, accounting for 27.6% of all suicides.
This is followed by illness driven suicides which stands at a whopping 15.8%.
Hence, sad moods or odd behaviour should not be brushed aside as a “normal reaction” to being ill and should be seen as possible symptoms of depression.
Doctors and family need to keep a close eye on symptoms of depression in the patients who happen suffer chronic or long lasting disorders/diseases.
What drives suicides?
Most patients who commit suicide aren’t at their terminal stage but the ones who can’t mentally cope with the initial stages of the illness.
Patients suffering from a prolonged illness are affected as they miss out on a lot in life, which is taken for granted by others.
They have to make many lifestyle changes and simultaneously cope with the side effects of medication.
These are highly stressful for a vast majority of the patients as they find it difficult to make peace with their new situation.
In addition to this, some also have to go through eternal chronic pain, which is the main reason that drives them to suicide.
How do we address this problem?
While illness is what causes depression usually, in considerable number of cases, it is the medication that creates depression.
Continuous counselling and keeping a close eye on depressive symptoms in patients is the key to preventing illness driven suicides.
Counselling should not be isolated as a psychiatric measure, but should rather be incorporated to an extent within the conventional treatment centres.
All physicians and medical staff treating such patients need to be able to pick up depressive symptoms through a patient’s mannerism.
