Southern States - Karnataka-Bangalore

Doctors debate on how to check suicides

By Our Staff Reporter

BANGALORE April 21. What does a family doctor do if a chronically ill patient tells him they will not be meeting again?

Does the doctor prevent this "suicide" knowing the patient will never recover? These and other such ethical and moral issues were discussed at a workshop on "Suicide prevention -- Capacity building strategies" here on Sunday.

The sessions for members of the Indian Association of General Practitioners (IAGP) were part of a series organised by two NIMHANS doctors - G.Gururaj, Professor and Head, Department of Epidemiology, and Mohan K. Isaac, Professor, Department of Psychiatry.

Dr. Gururaj spoke about the high incidence of suicides in Bangalore: 35 per 1,00,000 as compared to the national incidence of 10 per 1,00,000, and the age groups involved (80 per cent occur in the 15-40 age group).

Family physicians played an important role in their prevention as they were in close contact with the families.

Spotting someone who was "suicidal" and counselling him could prevent unnecessary deaths, he pointed out.

That view was, however, questioned by B.C.Rao who gave the family physicians' perspective. "Prevention is possible, but not always. And many times I have myself felt that a patient's situation was so bad that he really had no other way out," Dr. Rao said.

He agreed that family doctors had to be pro-active to the point of being considered interfering by the patient.

His colleague, Srinath Herur, gave two case studies. In one case, he failed to "catch on" that there was something wrong. In another, he managed to prevent a 15-year-old boy from "attempting suicide for the time being."

The workshop ended with Dr. Mohan Isaac talking about "Managing persons who have attempted suicides." It was not the amount of time but the quality of time spent with the patient which was important, he stressed. He also gave the doctors pointers on assessing patients' psychological states.

The NIMHANS Vice-Chancellor and Director, Gouri Devi, inaugurated the workshop.

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