It is time we decriminalise suicide attempt

Noose, Suicide
noose
Photo credit: File | Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Based on global statistics, a person kills themselves every 40 seconds.
  • Suicide results in extreme suffering among those that are left behind

It is illegal to try to kill yourself in Kenya. It does not matter what drives you to such desperation, but if it is determined that whatever you did amounted to attempted suicide, you will have committed a crime and will be liable to prosecution and jail time upon conviction.

Based on global statistics, a person kills themselves every 40 seconds. Our data in Kenya is very poorly kept, but even then we have evidence that at least four people die by suicide every day. For every death by suicide, there are dozens of attempts, and this suggests that in Kenya dozens of people try to kill themselves every day.

As we have argued before, suicide is the final common pathway in many conditions in which there is social or psychological distress and anguish, including in many mental illnesses. Suicide results in extreme suffering among those that are left behind, and it is understandable that they would feel so pained that they would seek to prevent any future occurrences of such a loss.

Unfortunately, people contemplating suicide are in such a state that it does not matter what others think about their thoughts. Indeed, many people have reached a state of suicidality because of what they perceive to be the attitudes of others towards them.

Mental health

No matter what policies or laws we pass, it is not possible to make a dent on suicide statistics by making it a matter of law rather than a matter of health, and mental health specifically.

It makes sense that if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem you encounter looks like a nail, amenable to solution by hammering. For our legislators, the ‘hammer’ is the law. Unfortunately, our legislative armamentarium is derived from our colonial legacy, and our suicide law stands as the shining beacon of our inheritance from the British colonial government.

While in the United Kingdom such laws have since been repealed, in Kenya we continue to hold on to them as though under the spell of whoever it is that was so pained by this kind of loss that they demanded legislation against it.

Today, we are making the argument that the hammer we continue to cling on has done more harm than any good it was intended to do, and it is time for us to discard it.

We are saying that to reduce the numbers of suicides in Kenya, we must begin by understanding why any Kenyan would try to kill themselves.

Once we understand this we can make plans to deal with the root cause, instead of waiting for people literally at the end of their rope in order to punish them.

Today we ask our legislators to step up to the plate and do something they will be remembered for. Who will argue this very brief Penal Code (amendment) Bill on the floor of the National Assembly, to repeal Section 226 of our Penal Code that makes attempted suicide a criminal offence?

What will it take to convince just one member of the August House to do this? There are dozens of us in the mental health field who stand ready to support such a legislator who is willing to make history by making the lives of mentally ill Kenyans that much less complicated.