More analysis on the suicide syndrome

Jan 19, 2016 Letters

Dear Editor,
At an alarming rate of 44.2 suicides per 100,000 people, nearly four times higher than the global average, Guyana has the highest rate of suicide in the world.
It remains Guyana’s most troubling social problem and one that seems to be getting ever more desperate. As such, it is of urgent need that Guyana unites at all levels to resolve this highly reckless phenomenon.
It is without question that this situation can only be tackled as a united front with parents, teachers, doctors and youngsters working together whilst being regulated by legislation to ensure that measures put in place are effective. Guyana has become comfortable with its lifestyle of alcoholism, domestic violence, child abuse, inadequate teaching measures and lack of justice, thus, leaving an expectation of hopelessness.
It has become clear to me that we are a nation that has considerably let our children down. They are no longer able to distinguish between being children and being adults and we need to collectively work together to ensure that we turn this around promptly.
There is a complete lack of respect shown to our young people. How can we teach them to respect value and honour themselves when we don’t lead by example? Children need to be taught to love themselves. Parental as well as teaching skills are highly lacking with a sense of shame being put upon our children for simple childhood mistakes, whereas these ought to be used as opportunities to learn.
To tackle this, I believe that we should implement legislation which imposes parental classes for those parents lacking such skills, focusing on motivating our youngsters. Teaching methods in schools also need to be overhauled whereby we provide an environment of free speech and debate rather than corporal punishment. There also needs to be zero tolerance approach to bullying in schools. We should also introduce self motivation classes into our national curriculum.
Culturally, our nation has become one that accepts forced marriages and underage marriages as the norm. Our children need to be allowed to be children and embrace childhood whilst learning independence and growing into well motivated young adults with a healthy mind set. Marriage at a young age does not allow this natural process of growing up to occur, resulting in mental illnesses. As such, I believe the legal age of marriage should be raised to twenty one years old. Legislation should be implemented whereby it becomes a crime to force your children into marriage or allow them to marry underage, carrying with it effective punishments for those who do not abide by the said legislation. In a country of broken children, it’s little wonder that there is a sense of hopelessness and despair hovering over our nation. This has in turn led to an increase of mental illnesses, mainly depression.
To make already desperate matters worse, there is a complete lack of understanding regarding such mental illnesses, and so the cycle continues. What we have now is a culturally enshrined acceptance that suicide is the answer to our problems. The cycle needs to be broken and broken now.
There needs to be serious investments into improving mental health services, providing more psychiatrists as well as easily accessible services such as local walk-in centres so that mental health problems can be dealt with effectively and efficiently.
The people of Guyana have been let down for many, many years by the PPP government under which corruption was rife and justice was lost. This has led to a build up of the sense of despair and hopelessness which our people face everyday. I call upon new government to effectively and strictly rid our nation of the said corruption within the justice system so that we can promptly deal with issues such as domestic violence and child abuse. President Granger, take your people under your wings and lead the way for them towards a brighter, healthier and happier future.
Dale Shaka Kalamazad

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