Covid-19–Related Suicides in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh: Can we Rely on Reporting System? A Rapid Systematic Review

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: With other life-altering changes, Covid-19 pandemic has brought a mental health crisis upon the global community. Untreated psychological disturbances can lead to tragic outcomes such as suicide. Currently, the most feasible way to know the true burden of Covid-related suicides is through media reports. However, the standards of media-reported suicide cases and their compliance to WHO checklist of suicide reporting in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are concerning. The question that arises here is if we can truly rely on the media reporting system of these countries to establish exposure-causality relationship. We’ve attempted to gather the evidence of reporting sources of Covid-related suicide cases in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. We’ve conducted a systematic review in accordance with the PRISMA guidelines to identify the media-reported cases of COVID-related suicides. RECENT FINDINGS: After compilation of the results, it was observed that most of the reported cases were from India (74.2%) whereas males died of suicide more often than females. When risk of bias was assessed using Pierson’s method, it was observed that 70% of the studies had high risk of bias. SUMMARY: We’ve attempted to gather the evidence of reporting sources of Covid-related suicide cases in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh and found that nearly all media reports hadn’t followed the WHO reporting guidelines for suicide cases. This could lead to a false sense of panic among the general population.