To actually kill oneself is the last resort for even a chronically depressed individual.
LONDON: Being a doctor of emergency medicine, working in one of the busiest National Health Service hospitals in the UK, I would say that it seems unlikely that Kamran Faisal’s death was a suicide. Suicide results from many complex sociocultural factors and is more likely to occur during periods of socioeconomic, family and individual crisis (e.g., loss of a loved one, unemployment, sexual orientation, difficulties with developing one’s identity, disassociation from one’s community or other social/belief group, and honour). It’s a complex phenomenon that usually occurs along a continuum, progressing from suicidal thoughts, to planning, to attempting suicide, and finally, dying by suicide. I see a wide variety of patients every day, including psychiatric patients. Keep in mind, in the UK, a wide spectrum of protocols comes into play on recognition of a potential high risk psychiatric patient. Psychiatric patients undergo long haul mental state changes. To actually kill oneself is the last resort for even a chronically depressed individual. Only when depression becomes chronic is it defined as a condition (disease) and that is when it begins putting one’s daily life activities at a halt. When that happens, there is risk for self-harm. A person who is a potential threat to himself cannot function in society like we do, and that too in a position that Kamran Faisal was in. I also condemn that the psychiatrist who actually turned up and informed the public that Faisal had once visited her, in saying so to create an opinion of his ill mental health. She has breached all codes of ethics and patient confidentiality. However, I would also like to emphasise the growing number of suicides and the need for school-based interventions involving crisis management, self-esteem enhancement and the development of coping skills and healthy decision-making, to help reduce the risk of suicide among the youth. Kamran Faisal was a son, a brother and a father. May his soul rest in peace.
Dr Usman Mansoor
Published in The Express Tribune, January 28th, 2013.
