By Dr. Major Rtd Lucy Wairimu Mukuria *
29.3 Million views.
That is the number of people who engaged with a post on X asking people the reasons why they had not taken their own lives with an aim to honor Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month. Given that the theme for this year is Changing the Narrative Around Suicide, examining these responses might perhaps inform a template for policy making, clinical practice and education for vulnerable populations.
According to the Ministry of Health, four Kenyans die each day due to suicide. Earlier this month, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights called for urgent measures to address this growing crisis. The epilogue of a suicide is populated by family and friends who infinitely question what their loved one lacked that lead to their suicide. The reasoning driving these conversations are as if their loved one was living in a parallel world and timeline. In the end, people imagine the answers to their questions are: a lack of purpose, love, resources and options.
We need to change the narrative. As a psychologist, I believe that we are overlooking a key intervention that would interrupt the escalation of suicide numbers: governance directed systemic prevention.
We must examine what is present in our lives that is normalized but what is also perpetuating, precipitating and predisposing Kenyans into being victims of suicidal ideation. We must make room for the possibility that the reality of the lives we live are such a hardship for others where they must endure, overcome and jostle with more often than we realise.
Our national daily average for suicide is under reported because not all suicides are carried out conventionally and the cultural stigma surrounding it still exists. Our collective logic tells us that suicide is a private family affair which those affected must live and deal with. We applied this practice with HIV/AIDS in the 1990’s and the cost to date is incalculable.
The answers grieving families seek lie in the social, economic and political climate we are all living in. As a psychologist, I know that mental health and governance are bedfellows. Political betrayal and compromised public service protections on a national level result in collective moral injury and trauma.
By and large, mental health care is a for profit private venture focused on pharmaceutical treatment and clinical care on a case by case basis. This practice costs the economy 62 billion Kenya shillings in loss of productivity.Therefore the gaps in governance that compromise national mental health management is not just limited to the 3.05 Kenya shillings spent on each Kenyan per year but it includes the overall lack of investment in protection.
The government’s push to increase the number of psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers and regulatory boards in a country that is stubborn about remaining socially, politically and economically hostile to its citizens is merely the opportunistic creation of another pipeline for brain drain.
In fact, the continued focus on numbers and figures only serves to reinforce the false belief that the prevention of suicide lies in the hands of mental health professionals working in medical institutions carrying out clinical interventions.
The majority of Kenyans are well versed in articulating what the individual signs and symptoms of mental illness are but convincing them to vote out political figures who have publicly demonstrated antisocial behavior is a hard sell. The laws and regulations guiding national and county mental health management exist but they have not been implemented because the Executive authorities occupying the national and county levels have not operationalized them.
Kenyans are world renown for their friendly, warm and hospitable nature. It is time our national systems reciprocated these same characteristics in governance.
Evidence of this would look like sustainable employment, social justice, health insurance, humane justice system, peaceful elections cycles, debt relief, conservation of the environment, independent and functional arms of government, and leadership with integrity.
As we conclude Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and look to the future, our vyombo za wageni practices (offering the best of Kenya to foreigners at the expense of Kenyans) must evolve to the centering of Kenyans.
*Dr. Major Rtd Lucy Wairimu Mukuria is a clinical psychologist and a Public Voices Fellow Tackling Poverty, a partnership of Acumen and The OpEd Project
