Psychiatrists Lament Criminalisation Of Suicid€, Calls For Amendment Of Law, Says It Cripples Prevention Effort

By Akinwale Kasali

The rise is suicid€ has led to the call by Mental Health Experts on Government, both at the Local and Federal Level, to amend the Law which criminalised suicide in the country.

The Psychiatrists said that the criminalisation of suicide attempts has blocked  prevention efforts and created a blind spot for data collection. It has, also, they said, made it difficult to understand the scope of the problem as well as develop effective solutions.

Prof. Taiwo Lateef Sheikh, immediate past President of the Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, APN, said that 90 per cent of suicide deaths are related to mental health conditions and substance use disorders while over 70 per cent of such suicide-related deaths due to mental health conditions are attributable to depressive disorders.

Giving reasons why Nigeria should decriminalise suicide, he said: “Nigeria is among 22 or more countries in the world where suicide remains a crime. This law is a colonial law. We inherited it from our colonial masters. They have gone back to their countries and changed their laws into some more compassionate approach to dealing with suicide, which we were known for before this law came to our whole country.”

He explained that the law attempts to stop the acts of suicide, but it does not stop the thoughts and it doesn’t address the social determinants of suicide.

“Suicide doesn’t just drop like that. It starts with thinking. But the law doesn’t go to your brain and stop the thoughts.

“The law does not recognise that suicide is a preventable condition, that we can have an intervention that will prevent it from happening and very importantly, the law is a barrier to help-seeking from people who have the problem because they cannot come out. It’s also a barrier to support people who have the problem because you are afraid that if you try anything and you don’t tell the Police, you will stand the risk of going to jail for one month. The law is a barrier to data generation.”

He said the aim of the working group is to develop a comprehensive strategy for suicide prevention and identify barriers to suicide prevention in Nigeria.

Sheikh who spoke at the maiden virtual meeting of Nigeria Suicide Prevention Advocacy Working Group, where he modified the definition of suicide from intentional self-inflicted death to a ‘compulsive urge for one to kill self’, noted that people who end their own lives do not want to die.

He said: “This may sound paradoxical, but that is the truth. But they feel there is no other option to relieve them of their pain. They want to exit their pain. They want to end the pain, they want to end the suffering,  and sometimes they believe it will also end the pains of their caregivers or close relatives, especially when they believe that they have become a burden on them.”

He added that most obvious barrier known besides cultural and religious barriers and stigma, is the barrier of criminalising attempted suicide, which has roped into the country’s culture and also increased the stigma towards those who attempt to take their own lives.

Noting that globally, one in 100 deaths in the world is due to suicide and about 700,000 people die annually due to suicide, he said for each of these cases, there are about 25 many more attempted but unsuccessful and each suicide death affects at least five family members and leaves approximately 135 other people exposed to suicide.

He regretted that “suicide has reached a crisis point in Nigeria, unfortunately, the availability and quality of data collected for suicide and attempted suicide leaves a lot to be desired.

“There may be gross underreporting of these cases and current statistics notwithstanding, in fact, we don’t have statistics in Nigeria because of this law that criminalised suicide, people are not coming out, deaths are not reported as suicide death because the family would be investigated.”

He argued that suicide is related to multiple intricate and intersecting social cultural and economic factors and challenges, which include denial of basic human rights, lack of access to resources, discrimination, stressful life events such as job loss, pressure from work or school, breakups in relationships, unmet aspiration of youth, forced and economic migration.

Sheikh, however, said research indicates that mental health conditions and alcohol substance use disorders are associated with increased risk of suicide.