Suicide Prevention

Suicide Prevention day organized by the department of Psychology Christ University was held on the 24th of September 2008. PSENG, that's our class had a documentary screening,published a newsletter, printed a t shirt for the class and decorated the campus. It was a lovely experience. It did get me thinking because,Bangalore is known as the suicide capital of India and we being students actually took the initiative to come up with a whole range of activities to project positivism amongst our fellow students and also to give out a message to society in general. We came up with quotes to accentuate the whole process. They were displayed everywhere in campus and we also had a banner signing activity where almost 60 feet of banner space was full. This shows that people actually do care, but will they go that extent of actually reaching out to a person who is suicidal?That is a question to ponder on. This is what we tried to project.Help those who need help. Life is not worth taking away, there is so much to live for, but like our Head of the department,Mrs.Iyer said, life is how you choose to live it.

Organizing this as a class was brilliant fun. There were huge ego clashes and of course with the effort of being politically correct I will refrain from going there. Suicide, is an extremely painful subject to talk about. Some faculty members themselves rejected our invitation to sign the banner, one was quoted saying "I don't want to even look at that word". This is how shallow minded some people are, but you really cant help it because it is their mind set. It is extremely hard to break those stereotypes. Acceptance levels are zero when it comes to the case of accepting a person who is suicidal or has attempted suicide. It is hard. This whole thing got me thinking alot. It taught me to be positive in life to a very great extent.

All in all, it was great fun and a great learning experience.