Health authorities, experts mobilise to remove Guyana from Top 10 suicide ranking

…as suicide among young persons remains high

The Guyana Mental Health and Well-Being Conference opened on Tuesday with heightened commitment and action plans geared at removing Guyana from the Top 10 ranking for its suicide rate in the world.
At the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC), an overview of Guyana Well-Being Studies by Professor Christina Hoven showed that suicide rates have been increasing mostly among youths.

Statistics place Guyana at second in the world for the highest suicide rate with 40.3 for every 100,000 persons. In 2020, a gender breakdown of suicides pointed to 19 per cent for males and 81 per cent for females.
“Suicide and young people is a problem throughout the world. We have to figure out what to do…The numbers will go up before they go down because as we do this work, we will find more people who are misclassified.”
She revealed that due to the stigma attached to mental health, persons do not want to access services close to them. This resulted in a directory published with facilities where these services can be accessed.
Within 2021-2022, she noted that significant achievements were made. This included appointments for the Director of Non-Communicable Diseases, Head of the Mental Health Unit and National Coordinator for Suicide Prevention.
This was coupled with the Guyana Wellbeing Study, using a multi-pronged research design such as clinical attempted samples, physiological autopsy samples, and exploring key risk factors.
A longitudinal case control study of youth 10 to 24 years was embarked through the past year. She noted that car accidents, and other such occurrences may be related to suicides, requiring intervention and alertness beyond the traditional methods.
Profession Hoven also pointed to increased collaboration across organisations and all sections of society and the need for better salaries. Some persons were trained in the country in this field but after a few months, they were working across the Caribbean.
“You can’t sustain the people without sustaining the workers. The salaries are not sustainable. So we can whistle in the dark all we want, but we need to do something. The Government needs to do something,” she asserted.
Targeted for collaboration are the Social Services Ministry, Education Ministry; Culture, Youth and Sports Ministry, and the National Road Safety Council.

Better mental health services
Health Minister, Dr Frank Anthony shared that studies have paved the way for better mental health services in the wider region.
He highlighted that approximately 10 to 15 per cent of Guyanese have a mental health disorder, according to the Guyana National Mental Health Action Plan, painting the need for intervention and data collection. Challenges such as COVID would also have to be included in the action plan, since many patients developed depression and anxiety during treatment and after discharge.
“That would mean that between 78,000 to 114,500 persons have a mental health disorder. Of this set of people, about three to five per cent suffer from chronic mental health illness…and approximately 20,000 persons have a severe mental health illness. These estimates demonstrate the need for us to have better care. Once we start putting systems to collect better data, one of the things we will find is that our current data might perhaps be an underestimate,” the Minister outlined.
He added that the new Mental Health Protection and Promotion Act also protects persons from stigma. Along with the Mental Health Bill, the Suicide Prevention Bill was also laid in Parliament.
Nevertheless, Dr Anthony said there are still areas where data is lacking, such as substance abuse. As data is being collected and analysed, it will be used to influence programmes and policies for the country. (G12)