After securing poor marks in a higher maths exam, a ninth grader of Holy Cross Girls High School in Dhaka went straight to the 10-storey building where she lived in a flat with her family and jumped to her death in her uniform on August 25.
Two days later, a Brac University student reportedly did the same but with a different reason. The 21-year-old girl, a third semester student at the university, left a note accusing her father of being abusive and a rapist.
The back-to-back suicides of the youngsters worries different quarters including mental health practitioners.
Aachol Foundation, a non-profit foundation that works toward suicide prevention, conducted a survey looking at how mental health issues impacted young people. The survey, released in July last year, revealed that 50.1% of young people in Bangladesh think of committing suicide at some point of their lives.
The study, participated by a total of 2,026 people and conducted between June 1 to June 15 last year, also found that 61.2% of young people are suffering from depression.
The respondents reported they are dealing with excessive stress, loneliness, pressure to get married, uncertain future, session jams in universities, financial instability, and cell phone addiction.
Aachol Foundation recorded 101 suicides by tertiary level students in 2021, including 61% of them as public university students.
The number was 79 in 2020, 11 in 2018, and 19 in 2017.
Tansen Rose, founder and president of Aanchal Foundation, said that a collaborative approach is needed to end suicidal tendencies in young people. The organisation so far conducted research in the university students, but it is now working on suicidal tendencies among school-college, and madrasa students.
“So far, we have recorded around 400 such suicide incidents by students,” he said, adding that they will release the report in October this year.
What can help?
Mental health challenges in Bangladesh have remained unmet due to lack of awareness and shortage of mental health professionals, mental health practitioners said.
Timely intervention is the key to prevent such unexpected deaths, they added.
According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), on average, 10,000 people commit suicide in Bangladesh every year.
Mental health expert Dr Md Tazul Islam of National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) thinks the educational institutions need to conduct regular counselling with students, teachers and parents to avoid such incidents.
Helal Uddin Ahmed, associate professor of Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatry in NIMH, thinks the parents should have equal concern on mental health of the students alongside concerns for their grades or marks.
“Each of the educational institutions in Bangladesh should have a mental health expert to deal with students’ mental health issues. Since this is absent in most of the institutions, the teachers must play a role here. They should offer support for mental health of the students who are in need of it,” he said.
