Suicide prevention

Jan 20, 2026 Editorial, News

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(Kaieteur News) – Sunday’s tragic death of a young woman at the Georgetown Public Hospital is not just another headline to be consumed and forgotten. It is another painful reminder that suicide remains one of Guyana’s most persistent and poorly addressed public health crises.

Behind the shock and sadness surrounding this incident lies a deeper national failure, the failure to build systems that protect vulnerable citizens before they reach the point of despair. For years, Kaieteur News has warned that Guyana’s suicide problem is not an isolated phenomenon driven solely by personal hardship. It is the product of social neglect, institutional weaknesses, economic pressures, substance abuse, and a culture that still treats mental health as an afterthought rather than a priority.

Yet despite repeated tragedies and repeated calls for reform, little meaningful progress has been made. The circumstances surrounding Sunday’s incident are especially troubling. A young, pregnant woman under medical supervision was able to take her life within the walls of the country’s main public hospital. This raises uncomfortable but necessary questions about patient monitoring, mental health screening, ward security, and emergency response protocols. Hospitals are meant to be places of healing and protection. When vulnerable patients are not adequately safeguarded, the system itself becomes complicit in tragedy. Regional data further underline the scale of the problem.

According to the Pan American Health Organisation, suicide rates remain alarmingly high, with older adults disproportionately affected and women experiencing a sharper increase in attempts in recent years. Factors such as unemployment, educational inequality, substance abuse, and community violence continue to create fertile ground for emotional distress. These are not abstract statistics. They reflect real people, real families, and real communities that are quietly unraveling.

What is particularly alarming is the growing role of social media in these tragedies. Live broadcasts and final online messages have become disturbingly common in suicide cases. While platforms can be tools for connection and awareness, they can also amplify distress and normalise harmful behavior when warning signs go unnoticed or ignored. This reality demands greater digital responsibility, from tech companies, authorities, educators, and users themselves. Guyana cannot continue to treat suicide as an unavoidable personal choice divorced from public responsibility. Mental health services remain underfunded, understaffed, and largely inaccessible to rural and low-income communities. Counselling services are limited. School-based mental health programs are scarce. Workplace wellness initiatives are almost nonexistent.

Alcohol and drug abuse continue to be addressed more with punishment than with treatment and rehabilitation. The absence of a comprehensive, well-funded national suicide prevention strategy is glaring. Such a plan must go beyond slogans and workshops.

It must include proper mental health screening in hospitals, mandatory suicide prevention training for healthcare workers, crisis intervention teams, expanded counselling services, community outreach programmes, and sustained public education campaigns. It must also address root causes such as poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, and substance abuse. At the political level, mental health remains a low priority. While billions are spent on infrastructure and physical development, human development is often left behind. Roads and bridges are important, but so too are the emotional and psychological well-being of citizens.

A society cannot truly progress while its people continue to suffer in silence. Families and communities also have a role to play. The stigma surrounding mental illness and emotional vulnerability continues to discourage many from seeking help. Too often, cries for help are dismissed as attention-seeking or weakness. This mindset must change. Compassion, early intervention, and open conversations can save lives. Every suicide leaves behind devastated parents, children, siblings, and friends who must live with unanswered questions and lifelong grief.

These losses ripple through communities and deepen social wounds that never fully heal. Sunday’s tragedy must not become just another statistic. It must serve as a turning point a moment that forces policymakers, healthcare administrators, educators, and community leaders to confront the uncomfortable truth: Guyana is losing too many people to preventable despair. If this country is serious about protecting life, then mental health must finally move from the margins to the centre of national development. Anything less is a betrayal of those who have already been lost and of those who are still silently struggling.

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• Editorial, GPHC, PAHO, suicide, Suicide prevention

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