By Ebele Orakpo

This is the second part of the report which yesterday examined the increasing  incidents of suicide in the country, and highlighted reasons why people commit or attempt suicide as well as featured tales by survivors and  the views of experts.

THERE was just so much going on, and no one to talk to. I attempted suicide three times with pills, and poison. I was always very close to dying but I just don’t know why it never happened. For every attempt at killing myself, I wasn’t asked why. Rather, I got beaten for making my father waste hard earned money on unnecessary medical bills.

Suicide

“My escape finally came when I got into college, I got a scholarship, and deliberately cut  myself off from everyone called my family. I tried to start life afresh, but depression had eaten deep into my soul that nothing brought me happiness. Weeks later, I had a mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with severe bipolar disorder, placed on medication and therapy. It took six months for me to regain consciousness of who I was and gradually live through the healing process. My friends narrated my behaviour to me, and it was like a mild case of psychosis. I still haven’t been able to reconnect with my father or even go searching for my mother because I fear for another breakdown. I still feel I need more time to heal. I use my medication monthly now.”

Understanding suicide and factors that induce it

Discussing Suicide on TV Gotel’s programme, Safiya Breakfast Show in Yola, Adamawa State, Dr. Lionel Rawlins, the Assistant Vice-President, Safety & Security Operations at the American University of Nigeria, said that creating suicide awareness is important as “people in Nigeria need to know more about it because a lot of times, people think suicide doesn’t happen here but it does.”

Rawlins, a forensic criminologist and former US marine, said: “The word suicide is a Latin word. The prefix, Sui means oneself (thyself) and cidium (killing of). It is called sui cidium. Short for cidium is cide so we have suicide (killing oneself). Any time you hear a word that ends with cide, it means killing,” he said.Dr. Omadeli Boyo, Medical Director at Pinecrest Specialist Hospitals/Senior Pastor at Lagos-based Chapel of His Presence said: “Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one’s own death. It is self injury intended to end one’s life. So suicide can be defined as the act of death by self inflicted intentional injury.“

Attempted suicide is a potentially self-injurious act intended to end one’s life but which did not result in death. Then there is suicidal ideation: this is not suicide in itself; it is thinking about engaging in suicidal behaviour with or without a specific suicide plan but just the fact that you are tired of life, you don’t want to continue. Research has shown that during their life time, about three per cent of Nigerians have had thoughts about ending their lives and about one per cent will plan on how to kill themselves and just under one per cent carry out an attempt to kill themselves.”

Suicide: Once illegal, now legal

According to Rawlins,in Western countries there was a time it was illegal to commit suicide but not any longer. “It is not illegal to kill yourself now but there was a time it was against the law. If you killed yourself, it was against the law and since they can neither sentence you to life imprisonment nor hang you, what they did was to take your property, including house, from the family and give to government. They would then drag your corpse through the street and eventually bury you at a crossroads so traffic can keep running over you. If you committed suicide, you could not be buried in consecrated grounds. So, it was to degrade the corpse and dissuade anyone from thinking of committing suicide.

“As we became more enlightened and educated, we realised we needed to change those laws. In the past, if you attempted suicide, it was against the law so you are punished. If you did not follow through, and somehow you were saved, then you will be taken to court and prosecuted. All that has changed as the world has gotten more educated and figured out that people commit suicide because of an illness,” said Rawlins.

“Society criminalises suicide,” said Boyo. “In the Penal Code, if you attempted suicide and you are caught, you are supposed to be taken to court and punished so at the end of the day, it’s all or nothing. You either do it and succeed or do it and face the law. Suicide is under-reported in Nigeria.

Criminal offence

When it happens, most families because of the burden of going to police station and being asked to explain how it all happened, most people just keep quiet about the whole thing and bury the person and describe it as a family affair. So suicide is still a crime in Nigeria. In Europe and America, attempted suicide is not a criminal offence; the victim is taken for rehabilitation while in Nigeria, attempted suicide is a criminal offence and fetches the victim seven years imprisonment with attendant stigmatisation. As a result, many of them prefer to go through with killing themselves rather than getting punished.

“One, we do not have a suicide register in Nigeria; the Police doesn’t document suicide as such because most people will not report suicide. You wake up in the morning and find your brother is dead; you just cover it and report that he died after a brief illness. They don’t bother to find out what killed the person. If they ask you what killed him, you won’t say he killed himself, you will simply say he just died. I have heard stories of people who come to the hospital for death certificate; you ask them what happened and they say he just slept and did not wake up; there was no homicide, no investigations, no coroner inquiries, no post-mortem and even the people in the house are not rounded up and questioned. In more advanced countries, the closest people would be asked to come to the police station; they would be asked what he ate the previous night, what has been his behaviour and things like that.”

Suicide glorified

Said Rawlins: “In some places, suicide is glorified. The Japanese have what they call hara kiri. If they were to disappoint someone, rather than dishonour the family, they kill themselves because they believe that will bring honour back to the family. In India, there was a time that if a man died, at the funeral his wife would kill herself. This brings honour and people look up to them because they believed she followed the husband to glory. Some still do it today. Some lovers have suicide pacts. ‘If you kill yourself, I kill myself.’ If you want to find out if your husband or boyfriend really loves you, ask him if he would kill himself if you die. As I mentioned earlier, some women kill themselves because their husbands died. It dates back to the very beginning of time.

“Generally, it is said that more men commit suicide than women but research has shown that there are more attempted suicide by women than men; it’s just that men go all the way to commit suicide and women always use futile means like taking 20 tablets of anagelsics, lighting up their clothes, or jumping from a storey building. The men just decide to go and drown. Men tend to do more lethal things.  In Japan, committing suicide is the height of self-immolation, you burn yourself just to show to the world that you accepted guilt. Most men that do that are political office holders who feel that it is not expected of them to do certain things and still live, so they kill themselves,” said Boyo.

Enter the suicide bombers: Although the activities of suicide bombers have greatly increased the number of deaths by suicide, the United Nations believes suicide bombers’ deaths are secondary to their goal of killing other people or specific targets and the bombers are not, therefore, typical of people committing suicide. However, Mia Bloom, a professor of Security Studies at the University of Massachusetts, and research fellow at the Center for Terrorism and Security Studies, disagrees, as she noted while speaking on “Seeing the New Face of Terrorism” on TEDxPSU show, that some of them could actually be classified as primary suicide cases.

“Increasingly in the last few years, we have seen rape being one of the ways in which women are mobilised into terrorism. Historically, this was at checkpoints or during midnight search and seizure operations by military members of the other side. But in the last few years, we have seen members of the terrorist organisations rape the women themselves. This is because women who are raped are considered damaged goods in those societies; they would not be marriageable. So, what the terrorist organisations do is to embrace the women and say..”that’s fine, you are going to die anyway as a result of the honour code because you have brought shame on your family; so take a few of the enemies with you.’

Terrorist organisations: “The women are being simply told that they can do more in their death than they can ever do with their lives. This is reinforced by cultures of martyrdom created in their communities that extol women terrorists by painting them on the sides of buildings whether as murals in Northern Ireland or graffiti in Palestine. In Sri Lanka, there are small museums set up to commemorate the female Tigers and the first Palestinian bomber, Wafa Idris, has inspired a series of novels. There are training camps for little girls named after her to follow her footsteps,” said Bloom.

Suicide triggers: Speaking on things that can trigger suicide, the respondents mentioned depression, philosophical desire to die, mental illness, stigmatisation, terminal illnesses, drugs, alcohol, rape, image redemption, etc., as some factors that could make someone commit suicide. “The most common one is depression. When someone is depressed, the pressure can become so overwhelming that he believes he is all alone in the world and nothing is going well for him,” said Rawlins.

Added Boyo: “Some people commit suicide because of stigmatisation; people with severe developmental challenges, neuro-developmental challenges like cerebral palsy, autism; even their parents encourage them to kill themselves. Some parents say: ‘You can’t kill me. It’s better you die.’”

Rawlins noted that a breakup in relationship, loss of a spouse, boyfriend/girlfriend, loss of a job or a child, etc., could cause depression. “About 13.4 per cent of people who commit suicide in the US have been experiencing job and financial problems. Some people are pushed to suicide if they cannot take care of their family because they don’t have a job and this puts them in a state of depression and when one is depressed, he starts feeling worthless.

“Usually, people try to tell us something, they cry out for help but we don’t usually hear them or we tend to ignore them and when they commit suicide, we assume responsibility. Research has shown that people who want to commit suicide say it; they are not afraid to say they want to die. They may not say it clearly like ‘tomorrow, I will kill myself’; no, they may say things like ‘one day, I am going to kill myself’; they vocalise it, ” noted Boyo.

Signs to look out for: Rawlins enumerated certain signs to look out for which may indicate that someone may be contemplating suicide. “If you know somebody very well and he is an outgoing, gregarious type who loves to have fun, laugh, loves to be around people and wants people around him, and all of a sudden he becomes withdrawn, sad, angry and no longer talkative; that is a sign that something is wrong and somebody needs to talk to him.

Or if you know a person who is well to do, and things are well with him but all of a sudden, he is borrowing money and doesn’t pay back; something is wrong. May be he is just borrowing money to pay the bills or he is fighting to save the family but sooner or later, that fight is going to run out.

Serious crisis

“If you see that kind of thing going on, you have to take matters into your hands. Go and ask the person if everything is okay. The response you will get usually is ‘yes, all is well,’ especially men. A man will never tell you he is going through a serious crisis. A woman can easily open up but not a man. A man is not programmed to tell people what his problems are, he fights it off.

So the common response is: ‘I am okay. Everything is all right.’ You can then follow with this: ‘Are you sure? If you have any problem let me know, I am here for you.’ He or she needs that reassurance that you are there for him/her. Although you don’t know what is going on but you are giving him that reassurance that ‘if I can’t help you, I know others who can help you so don’t do anything stupid.”

Destructive behaviour: Also speaking in the same vein, Dr. Raphael E. Ogbolu,  Consultant Psychiatrist at Lagos University Teaching Hospital and Coordinator of Suicide Research & Prevention Initiative and Staff Emotional Care Services, SURPIN/SECS, said preoccupation with death, taking unnecessary risks as if having a death wish, destructive behaviour, feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, self-hatred, increasing social isolation, increased alcohol or drug use, amongst others, are signs to look out for.

“One of the signs of suicide is talking or joking about suicide; then depression. Individuals who are depressed may feel hopeless and may lose interest in doing anything or withdraw from friends and family,” said Ogbolu, adding that all pastors should be trained in some level of psychology and be able to pick out people who are suicide-prone and who have suicidal ideas and hand them over to trained people. “They don’t have to be doctors; there are psychiatric nurses, teachers trained to identify such traits. When we see people that appear depressed, or people who don’t look as bright as they used to, we should have people in church who show interest in the welfare of others, willing to wait behind and talk to them.

“In schools, there are teachers who are trained to look out for sensitive children who have suicidal thoughts from physical or emotional bullying. If you are fat, stammer, stutter, have bow legs, squint, fail exams, or not doing well in school, etc, other children mock you,” he said.

Philosophical desire to die: On his own part Rawlins, however, noted that in some cases, some people show no signs at all such that those around would never guess anything is wrong. Meanwhile, they are nursing suicide thoughts secretly. “Such people have a philosophical desire to die. They are not depressed, they are not mentally unstable, nothing is wrong, they just want to die. They will because they  cannot endure the pains anymore.

Despair and depression:  “Or if you do something bad/stupid like defrauding people or stealing money from the church, you may kill yourself. If you kill someone and you figure out you will end up in jail and you don’t want to embarrass your family, you may kill yourself. “Not too long ago, the economy of a country crashed, a lot of men were stealing money and when they got caught, rather than go to prison, they committed suicide. These people know they are going to kill themselves; they are neither crazy nor depressed. So they keep up that charade that they are still happy and having a jolly good time, but deep down, they know they are in trouble and they will choose a time and place to commit suicide.

“The dangerous ones are those who go about their normal businesses everyday without a hint of what is going on inside of them. They alone know what they are going through; they don’t let the outside world into their lives. But when they are alone, depression fully sets in. For example, a TV personality who does a good show and at the end of it all, goes home to his loneliness. He escapes to a world he thinks is real, which is loneliness, despair and depression.

“He thinks no one likes him and he is no good. But the bad thing is that such a person is a very good actor because the next morning, he goes to work, puts up the best show ever and people hail him. Then he goes home and kills himself. That is why you see a lot of successful movie stars who are doing very well and all of a sudden, they kill themselves. What will drive a successful movie star with money and a career ahead of him or her to do it? There are different causes – it could be depression, psychosis, a desire to kill oneself; sometimes it is accidental.

Accidental suicide: “In some cases, people cry for help; they don’t really want to kill themselves but they want someone to notice that they are having problems. They may take an overdose of drugs but the overdose is too much and it kills them so it is an accidental death. Here is where I want to say something that is kind of an oxymoron: they are not so much afraid to die as they are not wanting to live. They don’t really want to die, they just don’t want to live. If there was a place between death and life, they would go right there. Unfortunately, you cannot be half dead and half alive. You are either dead or alive,” noted Rawlins.

Mental illness: Continuing, Rawlins said: “Mental illness is associated with suicide because when you lose all sense of reality, you start believing the things that come into your head. A greater part of mental illness is psychosis, you become psychotic and that is where you get schizophrenia, you start hearing voices in your head. This kind of person can be a professor in a classroom or a doctor doing surgery but they hear voices in their head that tell them funny little things which they start to believe. The problem is that when you start to believe such things, you do stupid things like killing yourself. Some of them believe they can fly.”

Redemption: Bloom noted that rape and the need to redeem their battered images often lead some females to willingly commit suicide via bombing. “Many of the women had something in their past that they hoped to wipe the slate clean and reinvent themselves so no one would remember that a woman had a child out of wedlock; no one would remember that this woman cheated on her husband; nobody would remember anything about her except that she was a murderer.

Vengeance is most often cited as the reason why women become suicide bombers and this is certainly true in places like Chechnya where the women have lost husbands, brothers, sons and fathers during two Chechen wars. The women think that by becoming suicide bombers and becoming involved in terrorism, they will get the respect of their community and in fact, the best predictor of a woman’s involvement in terrorism is relationship to a male member of the terrorist organisation.

Rape: “In Iraq, a woman, Samira Ahmed Quassim, organised the rape of 80 girls to turn them into suicide bombers. Increasingly, terrorist organisations are forcing and coercing children to become suicide bombers. It is the ultimate form of child exploitation. In places like Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, schools are being set up to do nothing more than teach children to become suicide bombers at the young age of eight or nine or 10 years.