Afterwaves of Covid-19. Is economic distress causing a spike in suicide deaths in India? BY PARVATHI BENU March 20, 2023 - https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/data-stories/deep-dive/is-economic-distress-causing-a-spike-in-suicide-deaths-in-india/article66635113.ece
The suicide rate jumped to 11.3 in 2020 and was at a record high at 12 in 2021
But there has been a jump in suicides during the pandemic. The NCRB recorded 1.5 lakh suicide deaths in 2020, against 1.39 lakh in 2019. Between 2020 and 2021, too, there was a 7.1 per cent increase. In 2021, 1.64 lakh people took their own lives, according to the NCRB.
The jump in the number of suicides in 2020 and 2021, according to mental health experts, is clearly the after-effect of the pandemic and the financial stress that it brought along. “In 2020, during the lockdown, when you had a real financial crisis, the number of suicides, too, shot through the roof,” said Soumitra Pathare, consultant psychiatrist and director at the Centre for Mental Health Law and Policy, Indian Law Society, Pune.
Daily wage labourers and housewives combined, form close to 40 per cent of people who died by suicide in 2021. Also, the National Family Health Survey points out that domestic abuse is still a very common thing in India. “Many times, a landless female farmer is mentioned as a housewife. The same happens with a female daily wager, too.