Islamabad, Jan 26 (IANS) The absence of data regarding suicides allows universities in Pakistan to frame deaths as isolated incidents instead of symptoms of hostile environments, a report has detailed.

Last month, 22-year-old Muhammad Awais Sultan, a fifth semester Pharm D student at a private university in Lahore, died after committing suicide.

According to his classmates, Awais Sultan was struggling to meet attendance requirements of the universities and had several times requested authorities for leniency. However, the authorities rejected his request. After his death, students held protests to demand investigation in the case. The university had said that an initial inquiry report will be presented within 15 days. Even after many weeks, no report has been issued yet.

A report in leading Pakistani daily ‘The Express Tribune’ stated, “When students attempted to speak about their friend and possible reasons for suicide, especially academic pressure, they were shut down, with comments such as, ‘He must have been going through something personal’. This phrase reflects a larger societal attitude towards suicide. It individualises the tragedy, empties it of context, and allows the institution to move on with impunity.”

“Students who protested for Awais were ridiculed and infantilised, treated as unruly children rather than concerned peers who had lost a friend and classmate. In the weeks after Awais’s death, suicide became a joke in everyday academic parlance. Students report being taunted for getting low marks with remarks such as, ‘Ab tum to suicide nahi kar lo ge is par? [You won’t kill yourself over this, will you?]’,” it added.

In order to pacify the protesting students, the university announced minor concessions like reduced fines for missing student cards and lower OPD medical charges. However, there was no talks launched between the administration and students. Instead, students who demanded response were met with strict measures.

Within weeks of Muhammad Awais Sultan’s death, another student tried to commit suicide at the same university. Ahsan Javed, a student leader involved in university protests and negotiations, noted that the second case could have been avoided if the first case of suicide was taken seriously.

“The idea that suicide is contagious is often invoked to justify silence. However, in this case, silence, it appears, is itself part of the risk. The choice of language, or the lack of it, around suicide discourse on campuses is telling. It borrows from criminality, emphasising criminal intent, leading to shame and stigma, rather than care and understanding,” an article in the The Express Tribune magazine stated.

“In fact, for decades, suicide in Pakistan was legally a crime. Attempted suicide remained punishable under the Pakistan Penal Code until 2022 when it was finally decriminalised. The legal shift, however, has not translated into a societal shift. Suicide continues to be treated as a moral failure and a religious transgression,” it added.

The mental health crisis, particularly the increase in suicides, in Pakistan is worrisome. A National Psychiatric Morbidity Survey which was conducted in 2022 revealed that the lifetime prevalence of mental disorders in Pakistan stood at 37.91 per cent. The suicide mortality rate in Pakistan increased to 9.8 per 100,000 population in 2022, showcasing an upward trend.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates, around 50-55 people die after committing suicide each day in Pakistan. Among those, 70 per cent of deaths are among young people aged between 15-29.

According to a study by the Aga Khan University (AKU), police record data from three districts in Pakistan-occupied Gilgit Baltistan shows 340 suicides from 2012-2022, with 40 per cent of the victims aged below 20 years. However, Ahsan Mashhood, a DPhil student at Oxford University who is studying suicide from a public health perspective, stressed that these numbers are highly underreported.

The Express Tribune magazine stated, “What makes meaningful intervention harder is the near total absence of reliable data. Pakistan has no comprehensive national database tracking suicides, let alone student suicides, or their ideation. To date, neither the police department has compiled a record about this, nor has any NGO come forward in this matter. The few media reports that surface remain far underreported in number.”

“The country also does not conduct psychological autopsies, leaving families, researchers, and policy-makers without insight into why someone took their life. This absence of data allows universities to frame deaths as isolated incidents, rather than as symptoms of hostile environments,” it added.

–IANS

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