Mental illness stigma fuels suicide say experts
While it was a normal part of life for people to go through tough times – deaths, unemployment, abusive relationships or loneliness – these down times could lead to them attempting suicide if they felt unable to find a way forward.
These were the points made earlier this month when the John Toalo Gaetswer Civil Society Forum partnered with the Uniting Reformed Church to mark the 15th World Suicide Prevention Day under the theme ‘The World Needs You Here’.
The day is a commemoration to those who died prematurely through suicide – with the World Health Organisation estimating that 800 000 people commit suicide each year, or one person every second.
Mental health co-ordinator Esi Molete from the Department of health in the district said it was important for people in trouble to seek help to try and address their mental state.
“It is important also to know the warning signs. Some people start talking about suicide often, while others work on a suicide plan and start making preparations for what should happen if they die,” she said.
Dikeledi Senatle, a nurse from Denosa (Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa) and a member of hosting church, Uniting Reformed Church, said the stigmatising of mental illness was harmful.
The Civil Society Forum committed themselves to visiting churches to and raising awareness on suicide prevention for the entire month of September.
“The church has a role to play. Pastors, clergymen and reverends are there in the church to listen to the congregations` social ills,” said Molete, explaining how all kinds of people could be of help and that people were most likely to commit suicide when they were in a dark place and felt they had no support and that nobody cared.
She said teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 generally faced school stress because of exams and heavy pressure to pass from parents and society in general.
Bad decisions
She said some felt they could not talk to anyone about their relationships and dating, leading them to behave emotionally and make bad decisions.
Molete also highlighted substance abuse as a contributing factor and urged parents to support their children and listen to their problems and guide further.
Matshidiso Molehabangwe, one of the guests at the service, said she was happy to be part of an initiative that was addressing real-life issues.
“I think it is important for the church to sometimes put the Bible aside and open a platform for us to talk about social life challenges that we face as young people in the world at large,” said Matshidiso.
Olorato Mooketsi, a guest participant, said the issue of language was also important in the field of counselling.
“Many people are discouraged to see the psychologist because of the language barriers. Mental health issues are very personal, and people need to be able to express themselves in their own language. Having a Tswana speaking psychologist can also destigmatise suicidal thoughts,” she said.
The Civil Society Forum committed themselves to visiting churches to and raising awareness on suicide prevention for the entire month of September.
An edited version of this story was published by Health24.
Author
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Unless otherwise noted, you can republish our articles for free under a Creative Commons license. Here’s what you need to know:
-
You have to credit Health-e News. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication.” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by Health-e News.” You must link the word “Health-e News” to the original URL of the story.
-
You must include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up link.
-
If you use canonical metadata, please use the Health-e News URL. For more information about canonical metadata, click here.
-
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week”)
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. Health-e News understands that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarise or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
-
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. You can find us on Twitter @HealthENews, Instagram @healthenews, and Facebook Health-e News Service.
You can grab HTML code for our stories easily. Click on the Creative Commons logo on our stories. You’ll find it with the other share buttons.
If you have any other questions, contact info@health-e.org.za.
Mental illness stigma fuels suicide say experts
by mpholekgetho, Health-e News
September 27, 2017