“No man is an island, entire of itself; ... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

JOHN Donne wrote these words four centuries ago, and Ernest Hemingway later used a part of the quote as the title of his novel. The quote describes a principle that modern epidemiology has since validated with data: that no death by suicide is a purely private event. Each death reverberates through a family, a workplace, a community, and, in aggregate, through the statistical and narrative record of a nation’s health.

Every year, on Sept 10, the world observes International Suicide Prevention Day, and every year I find myself uneasy with the framing of this ‘observance’. In practice, it so often slides towards something that resembles a commemoration where panels are convened, experts invited, and statistics projected onto screens. The day then passes and is folded back into the calendar — until it comes around again the following year.

I do not begrudge any of this; awareness, conversations, panels and specifically data, matter. My unease is narrower and rests in the belief that suicide is not a subject that can be adequately held by a single day, however earnestly it is marked. It is a chronic and distributed public health problem that requires sustained clinical, social, and policy attention throughout the year.

The task is to find and reinforce the one thread that tethers the struggling individual to hope.

As a physician, I practise under an oath that obliges me to preserve life and relieve suffering,........

© Dawn