Shoot down the idea of suicide

Teens are increasingly overwhelmed because of high-pressure environments at home and at school

Suicide is always a tragedy, and this tragedy is amplified in a country such as India, which has one of the highest suicide rates in the world (according to the World Health Organisation). Hundreds of Indians take their own lives, on average, every day. Amongst young Indians, suicide is the highest cause of death, whereas, in other countries, it may be the second, third or fourth highest cause of death.

Anecdotal evidence supports this data. Mumbai-based Megha Mawandia, a family therapist who works closely with teens and adults says that “teens are increasingly overwhelmed, because of social media, and high-pressure environments at home and at school. The spaces they would have had to traditionally unpack their difficult experience are no longer available. And so they are turning to self-harm, to try and wipe the slate clean. They are not thinking of the finality of what they are doing, it is an expression of pain,” she says. “Even children as young as eight years are testing the limits of their body, by cutting themselves, or through other attempts, hidden from their parents, because they don’t know what to do with the pain,” she observes.

Suicidal ideation is more common than one imagines it to be, yet we often lack the words to describe it or the safe spaces to share such thoughts. I experienced suicidal ideation in my 20s and in my 30s — both were occasions when I was depressed. Even though I had a supportive and loving family, and I was well-educated, I stood on the terrace of my building and wondered if I could actually take my life. I felt like a failure, and that mattered so much to me because I had never failed at anything in my life before this. My literary skills saved me because I realised that I could write poetry about my state of mind and share it with a close friend, even though my family did not know how depressed I was.

There are many ways to think about suicide prevention amongst young people, and I would like to share one in particular: being able to get professional help and to understand the root cause of emotional and mental distress. For Megha, it is important that parents do not normalise stress.

“When children ask for help, parents often say it is not needed. But we are living in a pressure cooker. Society does not have the empty spaces it held in the past. As a parent, I can’t change that aspect of society. It’s like saying, I can’t change the air quality around me. But I can put an air purifier in my home. When it comes to mental health, that ‘air purifier’ is the conversation for my child’s emotions. Going to a therapist should be as easy as going to a family doctor.” As someone who has been going to therapists, on a fairly regular basis, for most of the last two decades, I couldn’t agree more.

It has transformed my life, and I think it should be accessible to anyone who wants to talk with a trusted professional, not necessarily someone with a clinically diagnosed mental health condition such as me. Therapy allowed me to understand the root cause of my depression, which was low self-esteem. Despite my educational qualification, I did not feel good enough. My self-esteem was based entirely on external scorecards and external success. And when I did not get the kind of professional success I sought, especially when compared to my peers who were earning millions of dollars or on their way to becoming global CEOs, I felt life was not worth living. Through therapy (traditional talk therapy as well as spiritual therapy) and deep self-reflection, I realised that I had to strengthen my ‘inner scorecard’.

I reconstructed my entire sense of identity by looking inwards. I acknowledged that I wore many meaningful labels — mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend — beyond my professional avatar and also came to embrace my essence: a creative thinker who likes connecting the dots between diverse ideas and disciplines. The girl who wore yellow sunglasses at the HBS campus, and purple corduroy trousers in college. The woman who is optimistic, warm, friendly, fun and caring. The needle on my scorecard was becoming internal, and I became happier. Now, happiness was success; professional success was not happiness. Perhaps most importantly, I learned from failure, recognised that it was okay to be vulnerable and came to embrace life’s many struggles in a positive way. As Megha says, “children and teens need more room to fail, and parents need to sit with them during their difficult feelings.” Guiding words to me, as a mother of two adolescents, and I hope to many more.

(The writer is the author of Chemical Khichdi: How I Hacked My Mental Health published by Penguin Random House India recently.)