This is how to stop suicide

Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) links suicide to mental ill- health. The escalation of suicide cases in Kenya is alarming, which calls for the need to address mental health.

Most of the victims in the cases reported this year were men. Data from World Bank data put the suicide mortality rates in Kenya at 6.1 per cent in every 100,000 people in 2019 with men being the top-most victims at 9.1/100,000 people.

Mental health is the main contributing factor to dying by suicide. Therefore, Kenyans should be vigilant and ensure that nobody suffers mental illness, whose determinants—like extreme poverty, discrimination and lack of access to empowerment opportunities—may drive an individual into dying by suicide, according to KNCHR.

Life stresses

The World Health Organization (WHO) cites crisis moments with a breakdown in the ability to deal with life stresses like illness, relationship break-up and financial constraints as among the factors that make an individual to opt for suicide, a finding that is vindicated by the reported cases.

It is a high time stakeholders joined hands and come up with strategies to fight suicide as its occurrence leaves families distraught after losing their loved ones. Furthermore, other people, such as the witnesses, suffer the long-lasting consequence of mental disturbance after seeing the victims.

The government and other stakeholders should address mental health by making widely available affordable screening machines to identify individuals experiencing suicidal symptoms or mental illness symptoms for them to be helped on time. That will ensure effective mental healthcare for all.

Through that, we will have solved the better part of this problem. Other solutions, such as counselling and social support, should also be enhanced.

- Ms Akinyi is a media and communication student. [email protected].