5-year study to analyse risk factors for suicide to begin in November

Guyana has embarked on a partnership with Columbia University to conduct a longitudinal study over the course of five years on the risk factors associated with suicide.

The study is being funded by the National Institute of Health in the United States, using the best researchers from Columbia University in conjunction with officials from the Health Ministry.
This was announced by Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony on Friday, as World Mental Health Day (October 10) approaches.
“We’ll officially launch the study in November of this year…While they’re doing that, they will come up with programmes with how we can mitigate against some of these factors. That would be ongoing work. We also plan to do some additional studies with the help of Columbia University,” he informed.
The Minister used the opportunity to share that poor mental health was a continuous challenge in Guyana, given the stigma attached to it or those who are suffering from it. So, the Ministry has activated measures to ensure that primary health-care workers are equipped to detect such cases.
“It continues to be one of those diseases that sometimes is difficult to detect. Even when it is detected, there is a stigma attached to it, so people don’t want to readily talk about these conditions. We have been working on doing more comprehensive programmes as it relates to mental health. One of the things we have been working on is really to train physicians at the primary health-care level so that they would be more sensitive in the recognition of mental … illnesses,” Dr Anthony said.
He added, “As it is, there is probably a lot of people who would come to our primary care outpatient clinics and they would go unrecognised for things like depression and so forth. We want to get people trained to better recognise these conditions and once they do that, we’d then be able to catch these conditions much earlier. Hopefully, we’d be able to take preventative action so that the conditions do not escalate.”
Mental health conditions give rise to increased suicidal events. With a high suicide rate, the health official pointed out that action must be taken to reduce these numbers and curb future suicides.
“We know that a lot of people who are depressed can go on to have suicidal thoughts and then eventually can commit suicide. Guyana still remains one of those countries with high rates of suicide and that’s still an ongoing problem. In 2017, the suicide rate was 24.6 per 100,000 population. While these rates are a little bit lower than what it previously was, it is still relatively high. So, suicide continues to be a challenge for us and we have been working on trying to understand the risk factor for it and coming up with ways and means of how we can mitigate against suicide,” he outlined.
The World Health Organisation’s new Mental Health Atlas this week said there was a worldwide failure to provide people with the mental health services they need, especially at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic was highlighting a growing need for mental health support.
The latest edition of the Atlas, which includes data from 171 countries, provides a clear indication that the increased attention given to mental health in recent years has yet to result in a scale-up of quality mental services that are aligned with needs.
Issued every three years, the Atlas is a compilation of data provided by countries around the world on mental health policies, legislation, financing, human resources, availability and utilisation of services and data collection systems.
“It is extremely concerning that despite the evident and increasing need for mental health services which has become even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, good intentions are not being met with investment… We must heed and act on this wake-up call and dramatically accelerate the scale-up of investment in mental health, because there is no health without mental health,” said World Health Organisation Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. (G12)