Every two minutes, an Indian commits suicide, new WHO study reveals

Every 40 seconds a person commits suicides, and a decade long study conduced by the World Health Organization (WHO) has revealed that every third suicide in the world takes place in India.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The WHO believes that in 2012 alone, 250,000 people killed themselves in India, though the Indian government's estimate is significantly lower.

It may be all you can do, but no one deserves to be alone in their darkest hours.

Young people appear to be the most vulnerable-most suicides in India were committed by those between 15-29 years. Men killed themselves more frequently than women.

"There are indications that for each adult who died of suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide," said Shekhar Saxena, who heads the organization's Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Geneva and authored the study.

"It is an extremely serious problem and it is likely to increase in future because of materialism coming into society. Social disparity, economic disparity, educational disparity, access to health care is limited and many other reasons all lead to this problem," said Professor MC Misra, Director at the country's premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences. "Recently my own sister's daughter committed suicide for no reason."

He cautioned, "We need to be very proactive in our approach to identify the symptoms because if somebody has attempted suicide once it is likely that he or she will do it again."

Most suicides are preventable, the WHO believes. The organization says that the first steps India should take to lower suicide rates is to decriminalize attempted suicides. Currently, the survivor of an attempted suicide can be arrested and detained in jail for a year.

Dr. Vikram Patel, a psychiatrist with the Public Health Foundation of India, New Delhi says, "Making suicides a health care priority will help since a lot of young Indians are killing themselves and more so in relatively affluent states like Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu."

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