Mohmad Maqbool Waggy
Shakespeare’s appreciated hero is pondering suicide. Not in grief or mystification, but with astounding intelligibility and logic. He has lost his father and is in total distress that his widowed mother remarried in swiftness. His dead father’s ghost visits him to divulge that he was put to death by his brother, who now wears the crown. It is a bleak picture, so he asks himself if it is better to end this life’s misery by one single, daring act. The answer was evident on his face. If he does, then what happens next? Where does one go? What greater sorrows await us in that vast emptiness from which no traveler returns? Is it not better to face the present ills “rather than fly to others we know not?” So, his mind questions, analyses, and resolves with composed logic. One wonders whether today’s young man with suicidal thoughts debates the can of worms of his action with such calm objectivity. A little introspection should also make him pause like Shakespeare’s hero before deciding to end his life. It’s soul-crushing when anyone decides that life is too painful to bear. The suicide of a young person is exceptionally poignant for those left on the rocks; just when it appears, at least from the outside, that life could take you everywhere and make you anything you want to be, suicide thumps every window and locks every door. With no letup, suicides continue to claim lives in Kashmir valley, while most of the victims include youth. Pertinently, the number of suicide cases has gone up in Kashmir valley at an alarming level during the past decade, and the figures revealed by different concerning departments show an upward trend. In the last 20 days, Kashmir has witnessed an increase in suicides as more than a dozen of people lost their lives. These figures are about only the cases that were reported while the unreported ones go undocumented. In the recent past, several people, including some girls, attempted suicide. The increased incidence of suicide attempts, particularly among the Kashmiri youth, has become a severe concern. Every suicidal death leaves behind a trail of questions and a deep sense of ineptness. In the context of the ongoing and unpredictable COVID-19 pandemic, the disorder is exacerbated. However, what is in our control is to do more to identify the crisis building within ourselves and others and learn how to avert it. It is crucial to measure important explanations to understand the sociology of suicide to avert this grave crisis. But the struggle is more personal and philosophic for people who muse or give shot to suicide. If the essential quality of human beings is freedom of choice, and life’s purpose is Bentham’s Utilitarianism, i.e., a positive balance of pleasure over pain, then mental anguish and physical suffering can make suicide seem like a rational choice. It can even be seen as the supreme expression of sovereignty over one’s self. But this is misleading in multiple ways. First, no human being is autonomous. Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. According to Aristotle, “Man by nature is a social creature, and an unsocial man is either beneath our notice or more than a human being.” Thus a man finds mental health only in the context of supportive relationships. In isolation, naturally, depressive people are more likely to enter the vicious cycle of despair. The inner voice that normally whispers worthlessness can become a shout of self-condemnation. And it is dangerous when there are no other voices — no kinder voices — to contradict it.
When something that is self-condemning and self-destructive appears self-evident, that is the time to trust in some other person’s more positive insight of reality. And then, with endurance and professional help, hope can make its return.
Second, in most cases, the rational reflection of suicide’s costs and benefits is a lie. Suicidal people with mood disorders are particularly critical when contemplation that seems right to them is not valid at all. The decision to kill oneself is generally informed by lies that seem very, very genuine at the moment. That loved ones don’t love you. Those friends clandestinely have disdain for you. That everyone would be in an optimum condition without you. It accounts for these above measures that people with depression need pushy family and friends around them. They need an environment of people who will be compassionate to them in times when they pull out or start giving possessions away. When they discuss much death, or are bereaved (of a loved one or job), or begin split to others, or buy a weapon, or use drugs and alcohol to dull pain, or act heedlessly, or show signs of other changes in dispositions or behavior. In these situations, interference is not the violation of privacy — any more than using a cardial ventricular fibrillation on a person having a heart attack is a violation of privacy. Invasivesiveness — defined by pushing a depressed person toward professional help — is the appropriate response to a medical emergency. But people who experience depression have responsibilities of their own. In times when their depression is under control, they need to nurture a circle of family members and friends who are fully clued-up about their illness. And this requires the precise opposite of autonomy. It requires people with depression to be susceptible and enthusiastic to receive help. In this case, confidentiality and ignominy can guide to death. It is not a simple or natural thing for people to periodically distrust their account of the truth. But that is what a person with depression must learn to do. When something that is self-condemning and self-destructive appears self-evident, that is the time to trust in some other person’s more positive insight of reality. And then, with endurance and professional help, hope can make its return.
(The author is a Research Scholar Department of Politics & Governance, Central University of Kashmir. Views are his own) [email protected]
