We are talking about suicides, of OlusGun Adeniyi

The last two weeks have been difficult for me regarding health, but I appreciate all those who have called or sent messages. I also thank God for his mercy. I’m improving. I could not write this column last week and I had neither the motivation nor the presence of the mind to do it this week. But last night I noticed that the “day of the world of suicide of the world” of 2025 (September 10 of each year) has overcome us in Nigeria without much awareness of an affliction that takes the life of many of our citizens almost daily. In the meantime, Nigeria remains one of the few countries in the world in which the suicide attempt is still treated as a criminal offense pursuant to section 327 of the Criminal Code Act and section 231 of the Penal Code Act. As a reminder of the challenge at hand, I am republishing a reduced version of a column that I wrote on the number six years ago. On that occasion, I reminded readers of David O. McKay’s immortal words: “The most important of the battles of life is the one we fight every day in the silent rooms of the soul”.

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After the death in March 2017 of a doctor who jumped headlong in the lagoon to the third continental bridge in Lagos, I supported on this page which, since some wounds can be easily covered, we do not always know what the people around us are going through or what action could undertake when they are pushed to the limit. I used a two -minute Youtube clip entitled “Silent Battles” to illustrate my point in a piece entitled “The Silent Battles of Life”. Recent developments in our country indicate that many of our citizens really need help without knowing where to turn. This makes them susceptible to depression, a state that has been described as surrounded by a thousand people but feels completely alone.

A 25 -year -old graduate at Madonna University returned home from the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to stab himself to death, following signs of depression that his parents have noticed and actually did everything possible to help. A night guard at the Council of Studio of the State Scholarship of the Ekiti State was hanged with clothing material linked to the railing of a building at the Ministry of Education, after having told his sister -in -law who was tired of life. A middle -aged man entered the Wema Bank premises in the Sango di Ibadan area, naked stripped, climbed the tree of the net and jumped to death. A 400 levels of the Department of British and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, NSUKKA, (UNN) published a note of suicide revealing on her Facebook wall and then drank two bottles of “sniper” to end everything. Faced with the prospect of being withdrawn by Niger Delta University, a medical student immersed himself in a river in AmmaSoma, in the state of Bayelsa.

From the exams failed to be downloaded from a lover to despair deriving from the soft economic situation or from the complications of health and the pressure of peers, too many Nigerians are reaching their breaking point and taking their lives through various means. And if there is something that recent tragedies have taught, it is that there are many other people otherwise normal who breastfeed a feeling of emptiness and despair that in turn could trigger what is almost becoming an epidemic in our country. More worrying is that now there is a corpus of research that suicide can really be contagious with the reported death of a person who contributes to this decision by others. In his thesis on this theme, Dr Madelyn Gould gives the blame in part to the media. Also in our country, in some publications unpleasant photographs of victims Penzolano on the rope. “It has been shown that the media coverage of suicides significantly increases the suicide rate and the extent of the increase is related to the quantity, duration and relevance of the coverage,” said Gould.

Obviously suicide is not peculiar of Nigeria. It is a global challenge. Over the past 45 years, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), suicide rates have increased by 60 % globally and now one of the main causes of death among young people, the group at greatest risk in a third of all countries. In the United States, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third main cause of death between people aged 15 and 24, while, which is estimated, almost 30 percent of all suicides all over the world occurs in India and China.

In South Korea, Japan and the Asia-Pacific region, suicide is also the main cause of death among young people. In fact, a recent government report states that multiple Japanese children and teenagers killed themselves between 2016 and 2017 than in any year since 1986. “We would like to eliminate these tragedies completely, but the reality is several hundred children who are taking life (every year)”, reported an official of the Ministry of Education. “It is important to teach children how to get help as soon as possible … because it becomes more and more difficult to find help once they already suffer. The light at the end of the tunnel becomes increasingly dark until they start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel as death.”

The president of the Association of Psychiatrists of Nigeria, dr. Taiwo Sheikh, recently put the number of psychiatrists in Nigeria at about 250. “We are training psychiatrists, both at the West African College of Physicians and the National Postgraduate Medical College, but made a perforation relationship, but made a perforation relationship, but made a perforation report, but made a perforation relationship, but made a perforation relationship, But he made a perforation relationship, which made a perforation relationship, but made a perforation relationship, which made a perforation relationship. Stress, personal losses, cracks, frustration, pain or depression.

The most famous psychiatric hospital in the country is in Aro, Abekuta, in the state of Ogun. Yet, “Aro” or “Aromental” was for decades the name with which we tag anyone who can have problems that normally deserve a duty of diligence. Furthermore, since there is no support system, many cannot optimize their potentials. So, in addition to counting the bags of the body of the victims of suicide, we must de-stigmatize the challenge of bad mental health.

In October 2015, the “New York Times” published a long history entitled “The chains of mental illness in West Africa” ​​which speaks of how countries within the sapper, including Nigeria, people mistreated with bad mental health. We see him on the streets of the main cities of Nigeria, where the people who normally should be helped are parades in chains. “Each society struggles to take care of people with mental illnesses. In some parts of West Africa, where psychiatry is practically unknown, the chain is often one last resource for desperate families who cannot control a loved one in the grip of psychosis. Religious retreats, known as prayer fields, have created the rects of cychiatrics, usually with the religious who also revealed a real psychiatric count. Togo Four and Benin Seven. This is at least one million people in countries where the crossbar is common, such as Togo, Ghana and Nigera. “

Contrary to the way we deal with bad mental health, especially in Nigeria, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last Sunday broadcast a special program entitled “A Royal Team Talk: face mental health” in which the Duke of Cambridge, Prince Williams and depression and depression on a depression and suicide. “Men are the most difficult audience to reach in the field of mental health. Suicide is the greatest murderer of young people under the age of 45,” said Prince Williams who also shared his excruciating experience after the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who described as a “pain like no other pain”.

If there is any lesson from recent tragedies, it is that we should be sensitive in the way we respond to the conditions of others, even in social media. Although Dr. Robert Brandt’s concern concerned more professional colleagues in the field of medicine in his piece, “Silent battles that cannot be won alone”, its warning is still useful for all of us: “I know that from more friends who have been in that dark place that healing often begins to find a person who starts finding a person who is about to find a person who starts finding a healing person.

Nigeria Initiative (Mani) and other similar non -profit organizations can be found online, increasing awareness of mental health problems in our country and how people can be helped. But sometimes the choice whether to go on or give up is ours to make. In the difficult moments in which we live, it is easy to give in to a dark inner pressure in the face of problems for which we do not have an immediate solution. In such moments, we must always remember that life, since a writer has captured it appropriately, does not concern the wait for the storm to pass: “It is a matter of learning to dance in the rain”.

You can follow me on my X (previously Twitter) Handle, @OLUSEGUNVERDICAND on www.olusegunadeniyi.com

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