Out Of 750 suicide attempts at SMHS last year, 490 were attempted by females

Srinagar, Mar 12: A few months into her second marriage, twenty-nine-year-old Moomina (name changed), was in utter shock when she recently logged in her Facebook account. Her ex-husband had splashed her pictures with obscene captions all over the social media platform.
Moomina endured her first marriage for around two months, during which she was locked up and beaten black and blue by her husband, who had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and was mentally unwell. His family had conveniently hidden these issues from Moomina’s before marriage.
Then one night, when her husband had forgotten locking the door, Moomina fled away. She soon filed for a divorce and got it within a year.
The pictures on her Facebook profile however meant the ordeal hadn’t ended. She filed a complaint in the cyber police station, desperate to hide the pictures from her new husband. But her persistence didn’t pay off – the complaint moved at a snail’s pace. The stock response of police was: the IP address of perpetrator is being identified. Meanwhile, her husband discovered the pictures, and out of fear, anger and shame she tried to end her life.
Moomina survived as her kin saved her in the nick of time.
But everyone is not as lucky as Moomina.
A twenty-year-old girl from Pulwama was one such unlucky victim of cyber bullying. Last week, she consumed some poisonous substance and was found frothing at her mouth by her family. They hurriedly shifted her to SMHS hospital here, where she was declared brought dead.
The family members of the girl accused a youth from Keller village for sharing her photograph on social media.
“She was very perturbed by the photograph which made her commit suicide,” her father said, adding that they approached police authorities and lodged a complaint against the accused.
He claimed that a man from Kellar village of Shopian blackmailed her daughter, and compelled her to take the extreme set up.
“I am yet to come to terms that I have lost my daughter. We want justice, and the perpetrator should be put behind the bars,” the dead girl’s father said.
Once uncommon in Kashmir, suicides are now reported almost every other day in the valley.
Official data carves a grim picture. Alone in 2018, 750 people with suicidal intent were treated at SMHS. The patients were below the age of 30.
Data also shows that suicide rate is increasing significantly among women. Of the total number in 2018, 490 were females.
Registrar SMHS hospital, Dr Khawar Khan Achakzai told The Kashmir Monitor that on an average daily two cases of poisoning with suicidal intent are reported at the hospital.
“In some cases, the patients consume poisonous substances, mostly pesticides used for apple cultivation, which are readily available in rural areas.
“The patients who take substantial doses (of poison) need timely intervention within one or two hours after consumption, as they are susceptible to cardio respiratory failure,” Dr Achakzai said.
Such patients, he said, are usually put on mechanical ventilators.
“The reasons (for committing suicide) are usually failure in examinations, love affairs that run awry, domestic abuse, altercation with family members,” the doctor added.
He said that usually in rural areas, the patients are first taken to local dispensaries, where the stomach wash is done by administering hyper-saline water, which increases the sodium levels in blood and a person can die of hypernatremia (rise in serum sodium concentration in a body).
Dr Saima Farhad, a senior assistant professor who teaches social work at Kashmir University, said the suicide of a teenage girl in Pulwama has again shifted light on the problem females endure on a daily basis forcing them to take such extreme measures.
“We need to understand what is driving this behavior? Is it the anticipation of the threat of posting (on social media)? Or the actual act of posting that’s leading to such incidents,” said Dr Farhad.
“The reaction time taken by social media platforms needs to be checked. They should be quick to respond. Facebook and Twitter need to tweak their strategy according to local cultural nuances to avoid such incidents. For instance, what is shameful for a girl in sub-continent might be very different from (what is shameful for one in) the West,” she explained.
“Having said that, social media platforms have created a number of protection mechanisms – protect your profile picture, choose the audience you share your content with etc.” she added.
Dr Yasir Rather, Neuro-psychiatrist and De-Addiction Specialist at SMHS defined online harassment–also known as cyber-bullying– as “hurting someone else using social networking or online sites.”
“This includes sending messages, posting threatening, intimidating comments, and posting humiliating pictures,” said Dr Rather.
Cyber bullying, he said, can have very negative effects on the psyche of a victim.
“The effects can come in the form of emotional distress, anger, frustration and depression, and loss of self-esteem. They can even indulge in self-harm behavior. At times they may become so withdrawn that they won’t talk to family and prefer isolation.”
Dr Rather said that the problem of online harassment is often faced by young.
“Mostly adolescents, and more specifically, girls are the victims,” he said.
“They usually come with complaints of self-harm behavior and upon asking, they report about cyber bullying as precipitating factor or stressor,” he said.
Dr Rather said there was need for some preventive measures including control on media.