upcountry Insight: Youth suicide a lesson to parents

Jane Muberarugo 17, of Gatsibo district in Eastern Rwanda, was normal till her last minute when she committed suicide by taking animal drugs, allegedly after quarreling with her father Damascene Rudahusha. The New times January 8. Apparently, her father’s disapproval of her action of burying her elder’s clothes in a ditch influenced her action. American Psychologist Alan Berman suggests that more boys have suicidal tendencies than girls, but notes that the trend may change. He says the cause of the change in the trend, is because women have recently adopted men’s behaviors; in the process they will become more violent, use alcohol and seek status. Indeed according to The New Times, Muberarugo was said to have been notorious for beating old people and bullying children, characters previously unknown for women. This being the latest reported such incident leaves many lessons for parents: first, parents need to be reminded of a label on all drugs that cautions users to keep drugs out of reach of children, whether lethal or other types of drugs for precautionary purposes. It is not for the sake of apportioning blame; but most likely there was negligence on the part of the parents to have stored drugs in an open place. It is also important for parents, health care professionals, and educators to recognize the warning signs of suicide among youths. Health experts advice parents and other caring adults to mark changes in youths that may lead to suicide. These changes may included but not limited to, feeling sad or depression about the future, discussions about taking one’s life, changes in eating or sleeping habits and lost morale to participate in ones’ favorite activities. Experts describe suicide as a multidimensional and complex problem, which can not be attributed to a single cause. In view of the above, it is highly important that we make combined efforts to help parents, educators and health care providers in preventing things that increase the risk of suicide. Because of the turbulent history of Rwanda, trauma cases may also add to the causes of suicide which calls for careful scrutiny and treatment of children with such aforementioned signs. Danish researchers underline epilepsy as a major cause of suicide cases; they say people with the disease are three times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. According to them, women with epilepsy were more likely to kill themselves than men with the condition. The Aarhus University Hospital team studied 21,169 cases of suicide in Denmark between 1981 and 1997. The study revealed that 492 (2.32%) of the suicide cases had epilepsy. However, the rate of epilepsy among a random matched sample of over 400,000 people in the general population was just 0.74%. Even after taking account of factors such as mental illness, job status, income and marital status, as among other factors contributing to suicide, people with epilepsy were still twice as likely to kill themselves, according to the study. Does this act as a reminder to handle people with epilepsy with more care? Ends