'Suicide can be prevented on timely intervention'

Majority of suicides can be prevented on timely intervention, any person with suicidal tendency can be easily convinced through dialogue and timely counselling, experts said Monday.

"Suicidal tendency is a mental illness - it can be prevented through timely intervention. Any person with the tendency can be easily identified. Nowadays many communicate it through social networking site or share it with friends and relatives that they are in emotional turmoil.

"At these situation the kith and kin friends should intervene and convince them," said Sunil Mittal, director, Cosmos Institute of Mental Health and Behaviourial Sciences (CIMBS).

"Only when we talk about suicide and its causes that we can build an atmosphere of hope and resilience at home and the community to help prevent suicide," he added.

On the eve of World Suicide Prevention Day, observed on Sep 10, CIMBS launched a year long public campaign "Let's Talk to Prevent Suicide".

Giving an example, psychiatrists informed that had actress Jiah Khan, who committed suicide recently, hinted about her suicidal tendency on a social networking site, timely help could have saved her.

"Individuals with poor problem solving skills, impulsivity, interpersonal relationships have a high risk of deliberate self harm and suicide," said clinical psychologist Mitalli Srivastava.

"Identifying and helping those attempting suicide can bring down suicidal rates, motives can vary early identification and counselling will help to reduce the suicide rates," said CIMBS co-ordinator Sameer Kalani.

According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the majority of people committing suicide are in the age of 15 to 49 years.As per NCRB statistics, the last year alone a total of 135,445 people committed suicide, which ranges to 371 suicides per day or one suicide every four minutes.