Let us focus on a healthy mind to stop suicide
Nurses from Kiambu participate in Zumba aerobics during a mental health wellness camp for Covid-19 health workers.
What you need to know:
We urgently need to have people suffering from mental illnesses treated.
Sadly, Kenya has very few hospitals that cater for mental illnesses.
Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital is congested.
The country has 88 consultant psychiatrists and 500 psychiatric nurses while funding is hardly enough to cater for all mentally ill people.
September 10 was World Suicide Prevention Day. It came after many people have undergone mental and emotional stress since Covid-19 was declared a global pandemic in March.
“Covid-19 has changed our world. It has brought people, communities and nations together, and driven them apart,” said Dr Tedros Ghebreyesus, the WHO director general.
Basically, stress affects an individual’s physical and mental health. It has a possibility of morphing into depression, which can simply be defined as a feeling of sadness and lack of hope. If not diagnosed early enough, it can easily lead to low-self-esteem and, hence, suicidal thoughts.
Many mental health problems are attributed to unemployment, poverty, indebtedness, infections and loss of loved ones, among others.
Pandemic
Consequently, many people are experiencing emotional, psychological and mental upheavals. The pandemic has mostly affected people of slender means, forcing them to live in sub-human conditions. Statistics on unemployment, retrenchment, redundancy and poverty levels hardly make for scintillating reading.
The “Kenya Mental Health Policy 2015-2030” shows that 12.6 per cent of Kenyans are depressed. Besides, a 2018 World Bank report pointed out that 1.9 million cases of depression were reported in the country by 2015 while another by the World Health Organisation (WHO) says the number of reported suicides skyrocketed from 58 per cent to 421 per cent in one decade, between 2008 and 2017.
Second-leading cause of death
The WHO report cites suicide as the second-leading cause of death among young people aged 15-29. It says one person commits suicide every 40 seconds and more people die by suicide than at war.
The “2017 Depression and Other Common Mental Disorders” report says 788,000 people committed suicide in 2015 while a 2014 “Journal of Affective Disorder” report revealed that depression prevalence among university students was 35 per cent — 33.5 per cent and male and 39.0 per cent female.
More often than not, suicide is precipitated by mental disorder or illness. Instructively, mental health-related deaths have become a common phenomenon in our learning institutions and homes. The number of people who commit suicide every year is by far more than those killed by malaria, breast cancer, war or homicide, says the WHO.
Sadly, Kenya has very few hospitals that cater for mental illnesses while Mathari National Teaching and Referral Hospital is congested. Worse, the country has 88 consultant psychiatrists and 500 psychiatric nurses while funding is hardly enough to cater for all mentally ill people.
Effective mental healthcare is the antidote to suicide prevention; hence, we urgently need to have people suffering from mental illnesses treated.
Mr Muthama, a lecturer, is the author of ‘Leadership Defined’ and ‘Excellence in Leadership’. josephmuthama05gmail.com.
