Jamshedpur: Steel City reported a sharp spike in suicide cases in 2020 with 252 people killing themselves during the year, according to the figures provided by a city-based NGO.
Mahavir Ram, the founder of Jeevan, the NGO working for the prevention of suicides, said the average monthly suicide cases in the city was 20. Among the total cases, which included 168 men and 84 women, 207 people below 45 years of age and 45 people above 45 ended their lives abruptly
Ram said, "Between June and November, more suicides were recorded when compared with the period between January and May.”
Notably, 171 people, which constituted a major chunk of the total suicides, ended their life abruptly between June and November, averaging about 30 deaths every month of the period.
Between January and May, 71 people had committed suicide and in December, 10 people ended their lives Incidentally, the 252 deaths included 27 youngsters, four undergraduates and 23 school-going students.
"The Covid-19 induced closure of the educational institutes and the subsequent ban on outdoor activities perhaps impacted negatively on the young minds to take the extreme step, as the data suggests,” Ram said.
The director of the NGO, Jeoraj Jain, said 15 to 20 distress calls were received by their volunteers during the lockdown period. “Majority of the calls were related to job losses and financial distress,” Jain said, adding that several people made distress calls after contracting Covid.
“We have limited resources but our volunteers arranged grocery and also helped with cash to the needy people during in the lockdown,” he said.
Jeevan currently has 30 and the NGO operates in collaboration with the Tata Steel Foundation and the East Singhbhum administration.
City-based psychiatrist Mahesh Hembram fear, anxiety and distress among people will gradually decrease with the end of the pandemic.
He said, "Since the past few months, an average of four out of 10 patients who come to the clinic every day arrived with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) symptoms borne out of the fear of contracting Covid while the six others come with complaints of distress relating to Covid-induced job losses and financial problems."
Earlier in 2019 and 2018, the city had reported 159 and 154 suicides.