Manu Joseph: Publicizing causes for suicide is not just wrong, it’s dangerous

When there is no note, the media deduces a simple reason from what the family of the deceased say. At times, political motives amplify convenient reasons.

All this has surfaced once again with the suicides of booth-level officers of the Election Commission of India (ECI). A story has developed that across several Indian states, as the ECI pressures its officers to verify voter credentials, the stress has driven some of them to untimely deaths. The exact numbers are oddly hard to confirm; as reported, about ten officers have died, of which five are believed to be suicides.

Media outlets have attributed a ‘cause’ to these suicides: increased work pressure. This is in line with an old media habit. A few weeks ago, a doctor died of suicide and the ‘reason’ amplified by the media was the rejection of her application for a US visa. When a young Instagram influencer killed herself, the ‘reason’ assigned was her falling number of followers. When students in Kota kill themselves, the ‘reason’ is exam anxiety. When a ‘farmer’ kills himself, the ‘reason’ is usually ‘debt.’

Look at some recent media headlines: “Gujarat teacher dies by suicide, cites BLO workload pressure"; “Another BLO in MP dies, fifth death so far"; “UP BLO takes poison and dies, leaves behind video of ‘stress’ from election duty"; “Cyber-slavery and debt: Man dies by suicide while on video call with friend, citing mounting loans"; “India’s School Crisis: Rising Student Suicides due to unchecked bullying and academic stress"

Across the world, health professionals have denounced the promotion of simple ‘causes’ for suicide.

The underlying ‘reason’ for most suicides is mental health, which is complex. ‘Triggers’ are worthless ways to understand the act; often they may not be triggers at all. The amplification of a simple ‘reason’ could lead to a phenomenon known as ‘copycat’ suicides. People in similar circumstances begin to identify with the dead, find a justification for killing themselves, and if their mental health is frail, proceed to do so, often using the same method.

For instance, if the media reports that “indebted farmers" have been consuming pesticides, we begin to see other indebted farmers end their lives the same way. Those who are already vulnerable are pushed further to the edge. A feeling develops among them that it is natural for them to die, even heroic.

Also, the attribution of cause to an effect has created a perception that a truly wronged person would kill himself. Thus a false proof of misery has come about, putting those who are miserable but cannot escape life at a disadvantage.

If triggers like ‘stress’ and ‘debt’ are a poor analysis of suicide, what explains the sameness of a first wave of deaths before its media amplification? For instance, of Indian booth level officers?

What is going on is this. Any professional group in India is quite large. There are over a million booth level officers, and a little over half a million are reportedly involved in the 12 states undertaking special intensive revisions of their electoral rolls. In any large pool of people, there would be several untimely deaths, including suicides. Five suicides in half a million is, in fact, less than the national suicide rate.

Politicians and activists are given to exploiting branded suicides. Influential opposition leaders have reacted to the officers’ deaths by lamenting the electoral roll revisions.

Even the segment of Indian media that claims to uphold journalistic rigours tends to report on suicides as an effect of a simple and often sociological malaise. It is as though guidelines to how the media must report suicides are to be overlooked if they fit a convenient story.

In the West, the norms are clear. The American foundation for suicide prevention, for instance, states: “Reporting one ‘cause’ leaves the public with an overly simplistic and misleading understanding of suicide, and promotes the myth that suicide is the direct result of that cause."

Several mental health bodies make this suggestion. A World Health Organisation report warns, “Widely disseminated stories of death by suicide are often followed by more suicides in the population..." This is what happened with ‘farmer suicides’ and ‘student suicides’ in India. The media is not innocent.

Similar misunderstandings of phenomena afflict popular analyses of politics, war and economics. Oddly, it is even common in the analysis of physical ailments, which are much simpler than other aspects of the human condition. For instance, when someone who is ‘overworked’ dies of cardiac arrest or a heart attack, which are two different things, ‘stress’ is cited as the ‘reason.’ But the underlying reason is likely to be a combination of physiological factors, lack of exercise and poor diet.

The invocation of ‘stress’ for most famous human ailments has resulted in people spending considerable time on sedentary breathing exercises and then eating five samosas. Poor labelling of the underlying reasons for poor mental health, which must never be reduced to cliches, has resulted in even more ridiculous ways of living.

The author is a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. His latest book is ‘Why the Poor Don’t Kill Us.’