World News | How India continues to punish those who attempt suicide

NEW YORK, April 17 (AP) — Lasa (not her real name) and her husband were woken at their door by police officers early one Sunday morning and asked her to accompany them to the local police station.

Having just returned from the hospital where she received emergency treatment for trying to poison herself, Latha is finally relieved and grateful to be home at last.

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But after police harassment and neighbors’ questioning, a deep sadness began to haunt her again.

Sadly, Latha’s story is very common in India.

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In 2021, more than 164,000 people were reported to have died by suicide in the country, an increase of 7.2% compared to 2020. Attempted suicide was a punishable offense under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code until the Mental Health Act 2018 de facto decriminalized suicide by creating a number of exceptions to Section 309.

Section 115 of the Act assumes that a person attempting suicide is under severe stress. Rather than punishing, the bill urges the government to provide mental health support and rehabilitation.

However, Section 115 of the Mental Health Act does not technically repeal Section 309. The repeal would require a parliamentary amendment to remove attempted suicide from the penal code.

Instead, Section 115 is an intermediate amendment that waters down Section 309. It aims to end the harassment and blame that people like Lasha and her family face when they seek help.

However, this situation is not common. In practice, when a patient who has attempted suicide comes to a medical facility, the event is registered as a medical and legal case and the police are notified.

Police contact families of patients and interview patients, and while they do not often prosecute patients, they often harass and blackmail them and their families.

Nor has the government issued any guidance to doctors or police on how to deal with suicide attempts under section 115 of the Mental Health Care Act, allowing these old practices to continue.

What they could do is require doctors to notify the police when someone is admitted to a hospital for a suspected suicide attempt, stating both the likelihood that it was a suicide attempt and the likelihood of any murder.

For example, a suicide attempt could be caused by domestic violence or physical abuse, or it could be an attempted murder that looks like suicide. While in both cases the police still need to investigate, the way they handle these situations could be very different if given proper guidance and training, allowing them to deal with suicide attempts sensitively and not to Survivors impose unwarranted accusations and stigma.

Police cannot prosecute attempted suicide unless they can provide evidence that it was caused by a trigger other than stress. The fact that attempted suicide is still considered a crime in India hinders the delivery of care to this vulnerable population.

Fear of criminal prosecution and harassment deters people from seeking help early on. They tend to delay going to the hospital until their attempts have potentially life-threatening medical consequences.

Many people who attempt suicide avoid seeking medical help altogether.

This is especially important because studies have shown that those who attempt suicide are at highest risk of attempting suicide again within six months of the first attempt.

If people seek help in a timely manner, they can get not only the medical care they need, but also counseling and mental health support to prevent them from attempting suicide again.

Criminalization of suicide in the penal code does not act as a deterrent.

If so, the suicide rate would not have risen as dramatically as it has over the past five years.

The suicide rate, defined as the number of suicides divided by the population, increased from 9.9 per 100,000 in 2017 (after the Mental Health Care Act) to 2021, according to India’s National Criminal Records Bureau There are 12.0 of them. The solution is to fully legalize suicide by removing all ambiguity and repealing Section 309 from the penal code.

Although Britain legalized suicide in 1961, India is not one of the only Commonwealth countries that still has anti-suicide legislation in its lawbook.

There has been no increase in suicides in the UK following the law change.

More recently, suicide rates have declined in Sri Lanka following the abolition of a law criminalizing suicide in 1996.

Destigmatizing suicide in this way has led to a more aggressive and comprehensive response to the problem, resulting in fewer suicides in the country. India has some time to go before Section 309 disappears from the law books.

The Ministry of the Interior and Health, which is responsible for police and medical professionals, has yet to issue clear guidelines and protocols for handling suicide attempts.

Ultimately, central and state governments could intervene on behalf of those who have attempted suicide, rather than always calling for police investigations.

They can provide evidence-based interventions for aftercare supports and services. For example, the Center for Mental Health Law and Policy’s Link and Safety program, which uses health workers to provide brief interventions to patients who have recently attempted suicide in a hospital, has been effective in reducing suicides.

The role of the government, the police and medical professionals is crucial in alleviating the suicide crisis in India.

A good starting point might be to respect the exceptions provided for in Section 115 of the Mental Health Care Act. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)