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Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do?
Suicide continues to be a global health concern, affecting all continents. Although some studies have associated it with mental disorders such as severe depression, research also shows that a significant number of cases occur due to emerging life stresses. It is one of the leading causes of death am...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The African Field Epidemiology Network
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8028359/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33889235 http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.38.69.27843 |
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author | Banda, Gift Treighcy Banda, Natasha Chadza, Anthony Mthunzi, Chisomo |
author_facet | Banda, Gift Treighcy Banda, Natasha Chadza, Anthony Mthunzi, Chisomo |
author_sort | Banda, Gift Treighcy |
collection | PubMed |
description | Suicide continues to be a global health concern, affecting all continents. Although some studies have associated it with mental disorders such as severe depression, research also shows that a significant number of cases occur due to emerging life stresses. It is one of the leading causes of death among young people and is steady on the rise in Malawi. Malawi’s suicide cases disproportionately affect young males from rural areas. These cases are also higher than those of neighbouring countries. During the lockdown period to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic between April and September 2020, Malawi saw a rise in suicide cases, most of which were due to the resulting financial hardship. There is need to tackle the suicide epidemic holistically, on all tiers of intervention. People need to be equipped with socially acceptable coping mechanisms which are easily adaptable to a low resource setting. There is a need for initiative to be taken in training individuals who can manage mental ill health without overwhelming the health system. The entire health system and health policies should acknowledge the importance of mental ill-health and its consequences. Malawi needs to prioritise mental health issues, realising that indeed, there is no health, without mental health. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8028359 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | The African Field Epidemiology Network |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-80283592021-04-21 Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? Banda, Gift Treighcy Banda, Natasha Chadza, Anthony Mthunzi, Chisomo Pan Afr Med J Commentary Suicide continues to be a global health concern, affecting all continents. Although some studies have associated it with mental disorders such as severe depression, research also shows that a significant number of cases occur due to emerging life stresses. It is one of the leading causes of death among young people and is steady on the rise in Malawi. Malawi’s suicide cases disproportionately affect young males from rural areas. These cases are also higher than those of neighbouring countries. During the lockdown period to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic between April and September 2020, Malawi saw a rise in suicide cases, most of which were due to the resulting financial hardship. There is need to tackle the suicide epidemic holistically, on all tiers of intervention. People need to be equipped with socially acceptable coping mechanisms which are easily adaptable to a low resource setting. There is a need for initiative to be taken in training individuals who can manage mental ill health without overwhelming the health system. The entire health system and health policies should acknowledge the importance of mental ill-health and its consequences. Malawi needs to prioritise mental health issues, realising that indeed, there is no health, without mental health. The African Field Epidemiology Network 2021-01-20 /pmc/articles/PMC8028359/ /pubmed/33889235 http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.38.69.27843 Text en Copyright: Gift Treighcy Banda et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The Pan African Medical Journal (ISSN: 1937-8688). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution International 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Commentary Banda, Gift Treighcy Banda, Natasha Chadza, Anthony Mthunzi, Chisomo Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title | Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title_full | Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title_fullStr | Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title_full_unstemmed | Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title_short | Suicide epidemic in Malawi: what can we do? |
title_sort | suicide epidemic in malawi: what can we do? |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8028359/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33889235 http://dx.doi.org/10.11604/pamj.2021.38.69.27843 |
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