CHENNAI: In the age of Google, all it takes is the click of a mouse to have at our disposal a thousand different ways to commit suicide in a matter of a few seconds. Still, so many of them, especially youngsters choose to commit suicide in public places, many times, dramatically.
On Saturday evening, a Class XII girl leapt to death from the fourth floor of a busy shopping mall on Arcot Road in Vadapalani.
In the West, there have been research attempts to study the psychology behind public suicides. “In our country, however, we do not have any specific study,” Dr Lakshmi Vijayakumar, psychiatrist and founder of the city-based suicide helpline, SNEHA, told Express. The researches abroad point to cases of psychotic and mental disorders. However, based on a few interactions with patients and survivors here, Lakshmi said that more often than not, in cases of public suicides, the person chooses a place which reminds them of some deep matter connected with another person – say, an unrequited love or a failed ambition. However, she criticised the callousness of what she believes is the most important contributor to public suicides – media, newspapers and television news.