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New Delhi : The Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu has called for putting in place a National Suicide Prevention Strategy to curb the tendency among youngsters and others to end their lives due to depression and frustration. He was addressing a gathering after inaugurating the 19th Annual Conference of Indian Association of Private Psychiatry (IAPP) at Hyderabad on November 30, 2018.
Expressing concern over the prevalence of suicides in the country, the Vice President said that he was disturbed by news reports of suicide by youngsters, farmers and women. He called for a national campaign and added that there was a need for collective efforts from all stakeholders including the immediate family members, public health planners, policymakers and NGOs to prevent suicides. Timely counselling and family support can prevent people suffering from depression from taking any extreme step, he added.
The Vice President said that Yoga, meditation and spiritualism will provide mental equilibrium and solace at times of depression. Modern day fast paced lifestyle and stress were also leading to depression among youngsters, he said. There is every need to strengthen our age old family system, which can provide support for people suffering from dispersion, he added.
The Vice President said that modern medicine and proper treatment would enable people suffering from psychiatric disorders to lead normal productive lives even if they had faced the problem for a long-term. He said that it was unfortunate they often face ill-treatment and discrimination, sometimes at the hands of close relatives and family members. Naidu said that nobody has any right to ill-treat patients with mental illness adding that such kind of behaviour would further aggravate the severity of illness, according to a PIB release.
President of IAPP Dr M S Reddy, Vice President of IAPP Dr G Prasada Rao, Secretary General of IAPP Dr. Pramod Kumar and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.