Chronicle Editor
Kirth Dube and Charles Siziba, Chronicle Correspondents
RECENT media reports have been highlighting several cases of suicides by men in Zimbabwe in the last 2 months. The latest report was last week by the ZBCtv Online in Marondera, of a farmer who shot himself following a family dispute. He is one of many suicide stories that have occupied Zimbabwe media space recently.
Suicide in our Great Zimbabwe
One wonders why people in Zimbabwe are at risk of committing suicide. In most instances there will be underlying mental health issues that need addressing before it is too late. Furthermore, there is a cultural issue that men in Africa should be seen as having no bio psycho social issues as it portrays them to be weak. Therefore, most men in Zimbabwe pretend to not have any psychological issues that are bothering them and fail to come and speak to someone or seek help.
The youth of Zimbabwe has also taken to the use of illicit substances such as bronchiolitis medication syrup to get high, yet they don’t realise the impact it can cause with withdrawal symptoms. The most popular withdrawal symptoms include feeling emotionally very low in mood, unworthiness or uselessness. This is the time that most people feel suicidal as an end point to their problem.
Team Nkalakatha wishes to address such issues with psychological interventional techniques and strategies on ground with the help of the Government. There needs to be walk-in centres where people can go and speak to someone with regards to their issues and find help.
We have a society that will say to someone “qina njenge ndoda/ shinga semurume.” Although these morals can work to some extent, there’s still room for improvement. In regard to a psychological breakdown, these morals will not work because the individual will be feeling the worthlessness of being alive.
Society needs to be made aware of a pattern of events that take place before someone takes their life. This can include, sudden isolation from family and friends, or trying to settle everyone they owed financially beyond measure, asking for forgiveness of their wrong behaviour that they did a long time ago which was no longer relevant. It can also be associated with a sudden high spending of money they have been saving up to the point that makes family members worried or resorting to alcoholism or drugs.
Team Nkalakatha understands that these triggers show a possibility of one taking their own life. Especially where there are high levels of intoxication that leaves people not being aware of their surroundings. The withdrawal symptoms from such high levels of performance come with sudden low level in mood the following days. Suicidal people however, tend to regain strength, as if they are in recovery and become jovial, but in most cases, they tend to be more vulnerable at that stage. Family members or friends need to monitor such sudden change.
It is difficult to offer one a psychological intervention towards their mental health when they have committed a crime such as murder. People that have committed such atrocities will be on a high level of wanting to take their life. Therefore, society needs to act in identifying antisocial behaviour that can put others at risk.
Unwanted pregnancies also create a high risk of suicide among young and middle-aged girls. The very fact that our cultural background doesn’t welcome a girl who gets pregnant without being married “engalotsholwanga/ kana asina kubvisirwa mari” will leave the individual without any alternative but take their own life instead of going to a place that is neutral where they can be assisted with their issue. It is the lack of institutions that can be established to address such problems that can cause an increase in suicides.
What is this suicide that has taken over our nation?
Suicide is the deliberate act of taking one’s own life. Globally, suicide rates in men are just over twice as high as for women. In 2017 WHO presented that the global suicide rate for women was 6,3 deaths per 100 000; for men, it was just over twice that figure at 13,9 per 100 000.
Statistics by WHO imply that, worldwide, suicide accounts for at least 700 000 deaths per year. The exact number is likely to be much higher because of under-recording. Suicide has become a defining health and societal issue in many countries including Zimbabwe. According to WHO data, Zimbabwe has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. Zimbabwe suicide rate for 2019 was 14,10 per 100 000; show an increase of 0,71% from 2018 where it was 14,00 per 100 000.
According to the WHO, suicide is internationally viewed as the third leading cause of mortality among adolescents aged under 25 years. Although data on suicide rates among students in higher education (post-secondary education), are limited especially in low-income countries, available statistics suggest that student suicide is an important cause of death worldwide. Incidences of 6,5, 8,2, and 10,0 per 100 000 full-time students per year (or per academic year) have been reported in the United States, Great Britain, and China, respectively. The incidence in the Scandinavian country of Finland is 13,8 and 9,0 per 100 000 per year for male and female students, respectively. These data indicate that student suicide is a significant mental and public health problem.
Suicide and self-harm are major health and societal issues worldwide, but the greatest burden of both behaviours occurs in low-income and middle-income countries. Worldwide, there is large practical evidence suggesting a link in high suicide incidence and living in most deprived areas. The Samaritans highlight Scotland in UK that people living in deprived communities there, remain three times more likely to die by suicide than those in more affluent areas, and men continue to account for most deaths. This data, and Samaritans’ own investigation, suggested that reaching out to men from lower-income areas who are at the highest risk of suicide must be a key focus of preventing suicide in Scotland.
Suicide has received a great deal of attention during the Covid-19 public health emergency, and its prevention will continue to be a priority as we move into subsequent phases and eventual recovery from the pandemic.
Although rates of suicide are higher in male than in female individuals, self-harm is more common in female individuals. Rather than having a single cause, suicide and self-harm are the result of a complex interplay of several factors that occur throughout the life course, and vary by gender, age, ethnicity, and geography. Several clinical and public health interventions show promise, although our understanding of their effectiveness has largely originated from high-income countries.
Despite suicide and self-harm sometimes being seen as distinct concepts, here we discuss them together, given that many of the principles of intervention and prevention are common to both. Thus, Team Nkalakatha Think Tank Foundation is interested in examining the current intervention strategies and their effectiveness in Zimbabwe and try work with stakeholders in supporting where possible accordingly. There is vast empirical evidence suggesting attempting to predict suicide is unlikely to be helpful.
Intervention and prevention must include both a clinical and community focus, and every health professional has a crucial part to play. Hence our Team Nkalakatha philosophy is embedded in the belief that “Ilizwe lakhiwa ngabaninilo or Nyika inovakiwa nevenevayo”. We might be in the diaspora physically, but our hearts are in our beautiful Zimbabwe. Reading about all these deaths while far away from home digs deep and we feel disempowered, hence the reason for the plan to help proactively.
Social theorist Bronfenbrenner developed a concern with the proximal processes of development, meaning the enduring and persistent forms of interaction in the immediate environment. Bronfenbrenner shifted his focus from focusing on environmental influences to developmental processes individuals experience over time. Bronfenbrenner suggested ” . . . development takes place through the process of progressively more complex reciprocal interactions between an active, evolving biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects, and symbols in its immediate external environment.”
Bronfenbrenner Bioecological theory, coming from the developmental sciences, places an individual’s development within the context of various spheres of influence. These are nested systems starting at the level of the individual and expanding outward to more abstract, macro-level influences. Bronfenbrenner also suggested that in order to comprehend the effect of these proximal processes on development, we must focus on the individual, context and developmental outcome as these processes differ and affect individuals inversely.
Therefore, Team Nkalakatha Think Tank Foundation endeavours to point out that suicide must be understood as a complex human behaviour. Its complexity is the result of an amalgamation of different interacting systems affecting the person. The general assumption is that a person is motivated by their own individual level to take their own life and die. However, research informs us this is not the case as suicide is multifaceted and our theoretical perspectives must take that complexity into account.
Online Reporter