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Guyana National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2015-2020, Social issues, Suicidal behavior in Guyana 2010-2012, WHO suicide rates by country, World's highest suicide rate
Poison preferred method of suicide in Guyana
Photo Credit: Guyana Chronicle
In his article, “Guyana’s breakdown is connected to our high suicide rate,” published in Kaieteur News on February 6, 2016, Freddie Kissoon posits that an underlying cause of Guyana’s alarming suicide rate is “the political pessimism that has dogged this country since Independence.” Bear in mind that the controversial columnist, a former social science university lecturer, has been highly critical of the former ruling East Indian left-wing political party (1992-2015).
A small developing Caribbean nation with a declining population of less than 750,000 people (Census 2012), Guyana topped the chart of the World Health Organization’s 2014 report on suicide worldwide, based on data for the year 2012. With a suicide rate of 44.2 per 100,000 persons, Guyana beat South Korea (28.9) and Sri Lanka (28.8). At the time, Guyana’s health authority claimed a much lower rate of 34.7. The nation’s record represented almost four times the global average of 11.4 and over seven times the average of 6.1 for Latin American and the Caribbean. By gender, Guyanese men are much more prone to taking their lives than women with rates of 70.8 and 22.1, respectively.
Pressed to address these glaring figures, the government launched its National Suicide Prevention Strategy 2015-2020 in September 2015. Studies undertaken by both foreign and local research groups reveal that East Indians, who make up an estimated 43 percent of the total population, account for 80 percent of all suicides. What’s more, they live in rural areas where pesticides and herbicides are easily available – the preferred method of 66 percent of suicides. Afro-Guyanese, the second-largest ethnic group account for only 11 percent of suicides.
A study of suicidal behavior for the period 2010-2012 indicates that individuals between ages 10 to 29 are more likely to attempt suicide. Those who actually ended their lives ranged from 20 to 49 years old. Depression and anger are the most common causes of suicide. Other factors include economic problems, domestic violence, family discord, issues between couples, and alcohol abuse.
Kissoon attributes the “uncontrollable angst” driving suicidal inclinations to disillusionment with the East Indian political party that held power from 1992 to 2015. He claims that analyses of research data may be subject to “academic dishonesty” for fear of politicizing the issue. Admission “that the long years of [their] misrule contributed to the alarming rate of suicide among East Indian folks from the rural sections of Guyana” would not be forthcoming from researchers affiliated with the East Indian political party.
Recalling my own disillusion and angst as a young undergraduate during the autocratic government of my generation, I share Kissoon’s conclusion that there exists a connection between the nation’s broken bureaucracy and its high suicide rate. When youth is under stress and would chose to self-destruct, support from within the home and society are failing to inspire hope for a better tomorrow. Following fifty years of political oppression and corruption, the present coalition government remains burdened with conditioned ways of thinking and behaving.
Three Worlds One Vision 
At the risk of sounding blasé, a great article, Rosaliene. I wasn’t aware of the large contingent of East Indians in Guyana. What brought those people there? I’ll have to research the history.
Quote: ” When youth is under stress and would chose to self-destruct, support from within the home and society are failing to inspire hope for a better tomorrow.”
Do you realize how much you are saying in that one sentence? The realization of cause, or in this case, lack thereof. When I was growing up I was taught to depend upon the system, from family, to church, to government to NATO, to the UN and even NASA for my personal hope of a great future. Year by year, sometimes in rapid succession, disillusionment set in. I did my bit attempting suicide also – where was the hope when all I’d been taught was failing me? Even God was not there. What do you do when there’s nothing of the old trusted values left; when they’ve all been exposed as blatant lies? When you look and all you see is a bottomless abyss? Why go on living? I understand suicide. My mother did it at 46. She’d lost her hope too. “Where do we go from here?” is my favourite “Blackmore’s Night” song.
If we survive suicide, what now? Do we go on living for the sake of existing; of satisfying the needs of a society we can no longer identify with? Do we look over our shoulder to see if, in the societal dog’s breakfast of collective offerings there might be something still left worth chewing on? What if there isn’t?
That brings me to the point: if none of the old values hold sway, we must discover and instill in society a new value; one totally untainted from the past. When I say new, I mean new. Not just in substance, but in performance. Not only “what” but “how.” Can you think of one thing that could make a real and lasting difference? I’m not talking about practicality, or chances of success – such must of necessity take care of themselves. First things first. Where would you start?
I survived my suicide attempt, and I found a way to give my life meaning without dependence. Either I’m weird… or what I found belongs to anybody, everybody else, regardless of social condition or situation.
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Sha’Tara, thanks for sharing your personal experience in dealing with your mother’s suicide and surviving your own attempt. I had a close friend who struggled to come to terms with her mother’s suicide. For myself, in my days of angst, I never attempted suicide but wished I were dead and, like you, “I found a way to give my life meaning.”
In a world where the vast majority of us have little or no control of the forces that affect our lives, we must find hope and strength from within ourselves and, with compassion, help to lift up those who have fallen and are unable to rise up on their own.
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You summed it up nicely. There is meaning to life when it’s used up in helping others, however small the things we can do, if constant, and well-meant, and non-intrusive.
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Reblogged this on Guyanese Online.
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Thanks for the reblog, Cyril. Enjoy the Caribbean sunshine 🙂
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I’d be hesitant to jump to this conclusion. Not that the situation in Guyana isn’t terrible or to dismiss the country’s misfortune in any way. Rather, that the reasons for suicide can be quite complex. One might begin by asking questions having to do with the awful situations in any number of other countries, as well, both now and in the history of the last century and ask whether each of these had comparable suicide rates.
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I had the same thought, Dr. Stein. The suicide rate for Haiti is only 2.8. Rates for Iraq (1.7) and Syria (0.4) are even lower. There is definitely much more than poverty and harsh living conditions at work among young East Indians in Guyana.
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It is so very sad. I don’t know the exact percentage in Ireland, but I am sure that it is very high too.
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Inese, based on the same WHO data for 2012, Ireland’s suicide rate is 11.0 with males 16.9 and females 5.2.
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Thank you! High enough.
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Sad statistics that say a lot about the social net or lack of it, in Guyana. Where does one start to combat a problem like this? Surely the schools and the education system have a part to play in this dilemma? As far as the implication that the high rate of suicides is tied to disillusionment over the political turnaround, it would be interesting to see how these statistics compare to those during the era when the PPP was out of office.
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Ken, I agree that schools and the education system should play a part in addressing this problem. The local community and religious leaders should also be involved.
Yes, it would be interesting to study the suicide rates going back to 1966.
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I’m going to throw in some more “annoying” viewpoints here. What if there is a much broader issue here, one that requires a less parochial view? I bet if all stats were available and compared, the rate of suicides among teens and young adults would be rising year by year. Part of that due to population rise, of course, but I think there is a much deeper and troubling reason, not due to political disillusionment ONLY but to general disillusionment and realization that there is no possible decent future available to younger generations. Look at the mounting social problems, especially in “the land of the free and the home of the brave” which has stood as a however false beacon of democratic freedom and financial success for over a hundred years. Where do we go from here? The answer is, there is nowhere to go! When a species pushes itself to the limits of its supporting environment, it goes through a die-back cycle. Why should mankind be exempt from the rule of nature? If I were a teenager today, and I knew, or felt, what is going on, I would definitely choose suicide over slavery – and that’s what the New World Order, now firmly entrenched, is offering: slavery to various types of dystopias. So, higher rates of suicide among the young is due to a subconscious awareness that for the foreseeable future the majority is going to be plunged deeper and deeper into slavery; trudging along to keep the Matrix treadmill going as it crushes more and more individuals. The young are equipped to realize this and more of them are taking the road less travelled because the other one is clogged with horror and watched over by men in body armour and jack boots.
There are but two ways out of this quagmire: one, global violent revolution – the destruction of the capitalist-political-religious hegemony and the literal killing of all those involved in its continuance – French revolution reign of terror style. The other, much more effective, much more deadly and unstoppable with weaponry: satyagraha (non-violent, non-cooperation) against all levels of the System. A dead stop. No more voting. No more sending kids to public schools. No more runs to the airport to be scanned. All TV’s permanently shut down and contracts with providers cancelled. No more eating of meat. No more support for organized sports. No one shows up for the Olympics. Nobody in fast-food drive-thrus. No one joins any military organizations. No one shows up for political rallies. On it goes, use your imagination. The list of “no mores” is endless. The System collapses because all it is, is a big Good Year blimp and all the sheeple do is continually blow into its filthy nipples to keep it aloft.
This, of course, will not happen because despite all evidence against it, people will go on believing that solutions to global problems can be reached through the very Matrix that causes them, and on a piece-meal basis. People are believers. They cannot comprehend self-empowerment or free choice.
Damn, my soap box just collapsed. And it’s lunch time here…
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Ken, I just read this article published today on Demerara Waves: “Guyana’s anti-suicide campaign kicking in at schools.”
http://demerarawaves.com/2016/02/16/guyanas-anti-suicide-campaign-kicking-in-at-schools/
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There is a BBC documentary now circulating about the high teen suicide rate in Guyana, now determined to be the highest in the world!
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I haven’t seen the documentary, Ken. I’ll check it out.
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