Mahjabeen Channa

In the southeastern corner of Tharparkar, the golden sands stretch endlessly under a blazing sun. The district is widely known for its vast mineral reserves, including one of the world’s largest coal deposits. For policymakers and investors, Tharparkar symbolizes economic potential and industrial promise. Yet behind this narrative of development lies a painful and largely unspoken reality a growing crisis of suicide and mental distress among its people. In the golden sands of Thar, a land long known for peace, resilience, and pluralism, such tragedies feel even more heartbreaking. Tharparkar has always been a place where peacocks dance after the rain, deer run freely across the dunes, and communities of different faiths live together in harmony. For generations, people survived harsh climates through strong social bonds, shared traditions, and hope.

According to media reported data, 116 suicides were recorded in 2025 alone, a number that reflects not isolated tragedies but a pattern of deepening despair. In a region historically associated with resilience, harmony, and cultural richness, such statistics signal an alarming social and mental health emergency that demands urgent attention.

Tharparkar’s economy depends heavily on agriculture and livestock. However, recurring droughts often striking every third year have devastated crops, dried up water sources, and weakened livestock, the primary assets of rural households. When rain fails, livelihoods collapse. Families that already survive on minimal income are pushed further into debt, hunger, and uncertainty.

Poverty in Thar is not merely a statistic; it is a lived experience. Many households struggle daily for access to food, clean drinking water, healthcare, and education.  Economic shocks such as droughts intensify feelings of helplessness, especially among breadwinners who feel unable to provide for their families. For individuals living hand-to-mouth, the burden of survival can become emotionally overwhelming.  Compounding the crisis is one of the lowest literacy ratios in the province. Limited educational opportunities restrict social mobility and access to information about coping strategies, government schemes, or mental health support. In such an environment, hopelessness can quietly take root.

Perhaps the most troubling dimension of the crisis is the near absence of mental health services. There are no qualified psychiatrists available within Tharparkar district. Individuals requiring psychiatric consultation must travel approximately 267 kilometers Hyderabad to Mithi District Head Quarter Hospital. For families already struggling financially, the cost of transportation, accommodation, and medical fees makes such treatment nearly impossible.

At the taluka and district hospital levels, specialized mental health facilities are either extremely limited or non-existent. This means that early warning signs depression, anxiety, trauma, or suicidal ideation often go undiagnosed and untreated. Without accessible care, individuals facing psychological distress are left to battle their struggles alone. Suicide remains a deeply stigmatized topic in many communities. Conversations around mental health are rare, and suffering is often internalized. Many people lack awareness about the symptoms of depression or the availability of support services. Cultural expectations to endure hardship silently can further isolate those in pain.

Police investigations and local reports suggest that socio-economic pressures, prolonged drought, early age marriage, domestic tensions, discrimination, and a pervasive sense of hopelessness are major factors behind the rising suicides. Poor communities, in particular, have limited access to social safety nets and crisis intervention resources, making them especially vulnerable.   Suicide is never an easy choice. It is a moment of deep pain when a person feels trapped between despair and silence.

Yet when someone takes their own life, the suffering does not end there. It spreads quietly through the hearts of parents, children, siblings, and friends who are left behind. Families are shattered, questions remain unanswered, and the pain lingers for years. One life lost becomes a wound carried by an entire community.  But today the rhythm of life in Thar is changing. Climate uncertainty, recurring droughts, and growing hunger have made survival more fragile. At the same time, large multinational projects, particularly around coal and energy development, have begun reshaping the region. These projects promise progress and economic growth, yet many local communities still struggle for the most basic necessities.

It is essential to ensure that economic progress does not inadvertently contribute to social exclusion or psychological distress. True development must prioritize human wellbeing alongside infrastructure and industry. Experts and local advocates are urging both federal and provincial authorities to initiate comprehensive academic research into the underlying causes of suicide in Tharparkar. Evidence-based policy responses are urgently needed. Establishing dedicated teams of psychiatrists and mental health professionals at every taluka hospital could provide life-saving interventions.

Public-private partnerships should be promoted to design social safety nets, expand healthcare access, and create livelihood opportunities. Awareness campaigns about mental health and suicide prevention must be conducted in local languages to reduce stigma and encourage help-seeking behavior.

Civil society, too, has a role to play. While highlighting economic poverty is important, it is equally crucial to celebrate Thar’s cultural richness, communal harmony, and environmental heritage. Empowering communities with dignity and opportunity can restore hope. Thar, often called the land of peace, stands at a crossroads. Without timely intervention, the human cost of neglect may continue to rise. Economic growth must not come at the expense of human lives. Addressing poverty, discrimination, and mental health together is not just a policy choice it is a moral imperative.

Read: Mental Health Crises Hit Sindh Deserts

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Mahjabeen Channa is Social Development Professional based at Mithi, Tharparkar Sindh.

The post Desperate cries: Suicides increase in Tharparkar first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaheer Udin Babar Junejo

Beyond the borders of Thar, few are acquainted with the afflictions, anguish, and societal transformations that are shaping this land. Yet, the people of Thar, with their roots deeply entrenched in its arid sands, intimately understand the tapestry of suffering and resilience that defines their existence. My own connection to this earthly paradise, forged by the legacy of my forebears, has instilled an unbreakable affection within me. Thar’s narrative is a tale of a few families basking in glory while others grapple with unemployment, hunger, thirst, discrimination, despair, and the grip of helplessness.

In Thar, the tradition of unity prevails, transcending language, religion, and caste, binding people through shared wells and grazing lands. These sacred spaces were once where the elders communed, their lives interwoven. Memories abound from cooking wild grasses, and trunks, beneath the harsh sun during droughts to the prohibition of wheat trade from neighboring districts. Thirst and hunger have plagued this withering desert, yet the love for this land among its inhabitants remained steadfast even as the first asphalt road was laid. This road, a bridge to the rest of the nation, paradoxically magnified their sense of poverty, vulnerability, and neglect.

As opportunities arose with the expansion of education and employment, even the marginalized castes prioritized learning, striving for sustenance as daily wage laborers. The desert’s inherent resilience buoyed the weak, offering shelter and pasture when all else faltered. Rainfall, a double-edged blessing for four among forty seasons, nourished select parts, yielding crops for sustenance and sowing.

In the midst of a hand-to-mouth existence, Thar’s homes always welcomed guests. Then came a phase when the government intervened, offering temporary charity to transform circumstances. This marked a paradigm shift, as locals increasingly relied on aid, portraying hardship instead of self-sufficiency. Political affiliations remained caste-centric, dissociated from broader party agendas. Media and literate locals conveyed Thar’s plight to the world. While many poets continue to immortalize their struggles, some became constrained by the mainstream.

Today, in the twenty-first century, merely four percent of Thar’s populace enjoys electricity, while 93% remains parched for fresh water

National exposure yielded benefits; local representatives gained prominence, roads shortened distances, and freshwater elevated land values. Yet, these improvements also attracted non-local settlers, and opportunism, both local and foreign, stirred disputes over resource allocation. Along with the development in 2022, the region witnessed 179 suicide attempts, predominantly among the 21-40 age group and primarily within the Hindu community, with only 33 officially registered cases. Today, in the twenty-first century, merely four percent of Thar’s populace enjoys electricity, while 93% remains parched for fresh water. Health services falter, malnutrition plagues women and children, and ancestral lands are liquidated for a pittance. While the dream of metamorphosing the nation ignites hope and fuels aspirations, it coexists with the grim realities of rising youth frustration, suicidal tendencies, child mortality, and the absence of essential survival amenities. Thar finds itself at a crossroads, grappling with circumstances that threaten its identity, harmony, and humanity.

Health services falter, malnutrition plagues women and children, and ancestral lands are liquidated for a pittance

Now is an opportune moment to reflect on the fading values, as global connectivity is reshaping its own definitions of right and wrong. Let’s empower the younger generation to comprehend customs, uphold genuine values, and establish a framework for maintaining peace for everyone.

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Zaheer Udin Babar Junejo, based in Hyderabad, is a specialist in Institutional Development, MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning), and Fundraising.

The post The cemetery of Infants, or a game changer? first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Monitoring Desk

Washington

A Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Schmidt College of Medicine study revealed that the suicide rate among teens 13 to 14 years old is increasing exponentially in the U.S.

According to the study, suicides have more than doubled between 2008 and 2018 among U.S. adolescents. These increasing trends in suicide deaths were similar by gender or race in this age group in urban and rural areas; although in rural areas, where there is easier access to guns, they were more frequent.

Suicides were committed “most frequently between the months of September and May and were most frequent on Mondays, followed by the rest of the week.” The study suggests that school stress contributes to suicidal ideation among adolescents.

In USA, suicide is 2nd cause of premature death in children & kids ages 10 to 24, and top cause of death among teenagers ages 13 to 14

In rural areas, firearms were used in 46.7% of youth suicides, while in metropolitan areas they were used in 34.7%.

“Our data show that non-metropolitan areas have higher rates of teen suicide, regardless of method, and rural areas have higher rates due to firearms,” said Professor Charles H. Hennekens, one of the study’s authors.

According to Hennekens, “during the years immediately preceding the onset of the increase in suicide rates among 13- to 14-year-olds, several social networking platforms used by teens were launched.”

Among the most used by teens were, Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Tumblr, said the professor noting that in 2018, Instagram and Snapchat surpassed all but YouTube.

Lead author Sarah K. Wood, a professor of pediatrics at FAU said in a statement that while the study data point to a temporal correlation between social media use, school stress and firearms, “further analytic studies are needed.”

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Courtesy: TeleSur (Posted on April 28, 2023)

The post Suicide Rate Rises among US Teens first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Zaheer Udin Babar Junejo

Tharparkar, once known as the land of pure & Peacocks, is now facing the challenges of stress, alienation, and suicides. Despite its unmatchable beauty and calmness, Thar is experiencing hard times that are eroding its identity, harmony, and humanity. As a native of the land, I remember a time when food may have been scarce, but harmony and humanity were abundant. However, today, as said while Pakistan is changing, I believe Thar is losing its essence.

One of the alarming issues in Thar is the rising number of suicide cases. In 2022, there were 179 suicide attempts in Tharparkar, Umerkot, and adjoining areas of Mirpurkhas, with only 33 cases registered. The majority of those who committed suicide were in the productive age group of 21-40 years, with 83% of the cases from the Hindu community. The underlying factors leading to suicide include poverty, lack of access to basic necessities like food, water, healthcare, and education, and a sense of hopelessness and despair. All of us need to ensure that the economic well-being and industrialization of the area must not the cause of suicidal behavior.

One of the alarming issues in Thar is the rising number of suicide cases. In 2022, there were 179 suicide attempts in Tharparkar, Umerkot, and adjoining areas of Mirpurkhas, with only 33 cases registered

People living hand-to-mouth are at risk of losing hope and attempting suicide due to poverty, lack of access to basic necessities, and discrimination. By valuing diversity and promoting equality, we can create a society where everyone feels valued and can contribute to building a society where humanity rules. To prevent suicides, it is essential to address the underlying factors and provide support and resources to low-caste and poor communities. This includes increasing access to mental health services, addressing discrimination and poverty, and promoting awareness and education about suicide prevention. Generally, it is witnessed that low-caste and poor communities often have limited access to mental health services, social support systems, and crisis intervention resources, making them vulnerable to suicide.

Outlets established for justice should make themselves easily accessible to these communities that face discrimination regularly. Public-private partnerships should be promoted to design social safety nets and work jointly for the well-being of these communities. Civil society should promote the richness of culture and the environment and not just regularly remind people of economic poverty, which can create dreams with no level playing field.

Thar, the land of peace, needs immediate attention to prevent further suicides and to address the underlying factors. Public-private partnerships, access to mental health services, social support systems, and awareness and education about suicide prevention are necessary steps in addressing the situation in Thar. The richness of culture and environment must be promoted, and economic well-being must not come at the cost of human lives.

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Zaheer Udin Babar Junejo is Community Development Professional based in Hyderabad

The post Thar is losing its essence! first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Kiran Javed

Suicide means the act of ending one’s own life. The act of intentionally causing one’s own death has got so many different reasons which vary from person to person. The act of killing himself/herself mostly happen because of stress such as having financial and academic problems, relationship problems, breakup or divorce, harassment and bullying cases, blackmailing someone whether mentally or physically.

In the same way, cases vary from country to country. The record shows that in developing countries the cases occur 1.5% whereas in developed countries it’s 3.5% which has got different reasons. According to the 2015 record of suicide cases, some 82, 8000 cases were reported globally, the 10th leading cause of death, which means 1.5% deaths are caused by suicide globally.

The research also shows that the higher rate of suicide is among men than women. In western world, most of the persons committing suicide are of 15 to 30 years of age. It was recorded that there are an estimated 10 to 20 million non-fatal suicide attempts which lead to long term injuries and disabilities.

Suicide is religiously considered wrong, and in some countries it’s a crime and morally wrong to end one’s own life but in Japan it is considered as means of failure and sometimes a protest which is known as “Seppuku”. In India, it would be a custom that widow will end her life at the funeral of her husband whether with her own will or by being under pressure which was known as “Sati”.

In rare cases what happens – people burn themselves when they are not given justice just in order to show the world that we are not given justice or we want justice, as in Sindh province of Pakistan’s history Mai Jindo’s daughters set themselves on fire in front of court in order to draw the attention of public on their case, and that their case is taken slightly, just because of corrupt system. As a result of setting themselves ablaze, they succeeded to draw public attention leading to get the justice.

If we talk about the causes of suicide, we’ll find multiple reasons which lead an individual to commit suicide and end his/her life. Here are few of them:

1. Mental stress or disorder: Most of suicide cases happen because of mental stress and suppressed feelings as someone is having and has got nobody to share the problem or ask help/guidance, so the person thinks of only one thing which really satisfies himself/herself is to end his/her life which they consider as end of every problem.
2. Financial issues or lack of job opportunities: In this modern world, meeting basic needs of family has become the biggest issue. When the man finds himself surrounded by so many financial problems and is unable to solve them he decides to end his life which he considers the freedom from every problem. This mostly happens in poor countries where government does not play its role and providing the basic facilities and job opportunities.
3. Academic issues/difficulties: Well, in backward countries ( poor in educational system ) like India and Pakistan where there is no proper educational system, where students are bound and are considered as successful or best student on a condition to get good grades even if teachers does not have a proper way to teach them but still we expect them to get good marks and where the teachers does not teach friendly to students and just keeps on pressuring the students which make students to take a wrong decision/step.
4. Divorce and break-ups: These kinds of cases happen in developing countries where the students are not given proper education about these kind of things, that what we should do in these kind of situations or how to manage them.
5. Harassment/blackmailing: Not just in our country but in India and other different countries which are backward in educational system, whose judiciary system is weak, whose most of departments are corrupt, whose educational institutes are full of yahoos, who use students just to fulfill their worst desire, who has got no feelings that they are destroying the life of innocent students and where system helps them to easily get themselves out from them cases and situation.

How to prevent suicide attempts

Off course nothing is impossible in this world, in the same way suicide is preventable. It depends on the role of individuals, community and society. Prevention could be done through different strategies as giving mental treatment, proper guidance and counseling, hopes and in last reducing all factors which compel individuals to commit suicide.

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Kiran Javed is BS English Student at Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University, Nawabshah

The post How to prevent suicides? first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Alizeh Kohari

Early in the morning, on the last day of a difficult year – December 31, 2020 – Chaman Lal received a call from home. His youngest sister, 20-year-old Babita, was missing.

Chaman, who is in his thirties, worked in the city of Hyderabad as a cashier at a gas station, but home was the desert town of Mithi, 322km (200 miles) and a four-hour bus ride away. He rushed back. Meanwhile, in Diplo, 40km (25 miles) southwest of Mithi, Chaman’s other sister, 29-year-old Guddi, woke up to find that her husband Doongar hadn’t come home all night. He worked in Mithi for an NGO supporting orphans and widows. He owned his own motorcycle, a source of pride for the family, and commuted by it daily.

It was noon by the time Chaman reached Mithi. It was a wintry Thursday, by desert standards – a nip in the air, the sun pleasingly mellow – and the cluttered town lanes burbled with motorcycles and qingqi rickshaws swerving past rickety pushcarts and glowering cattle. By then, Babita and Doongar had been located and confirmed dead, their bodies found in an empty house at the edge of town, hanging by a single rope from a ceiling fan.

Despite the family’s insistence on foul play and the emergence of jarring details — the house belonged to a local policeman; according to the family, Babita and Doongar barely ever interacted — the police ruled it a joint suicide. Chaman, who has sun-streaked hair and amber eyes, recounts the incident in a daze, his eyes inadvertently straying to the ceiling fan above him in his Mithi home.

Babita and Doongar’s deaths were, according to police records, the 112th and 113th suicides in 2020 in Tharparkar district where Mithi is located. That year saw the highest annual figures recorded in the desert region. Quantitative data is tricky in a country like Pakistan, however, especially when it comes to suicide, which remains a criminal offence with attempts punishable by imprisonment and fines. Pakistan does not compile national suicide statistics, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the suicide rate in Pakistan to be 8.9 deaths per 100,000 people, slightly below the global average of nine.

Local attempts at comprehensive data collection yield even sparser results. Last year, the mental health authority in the south-eastern province of Sindh concluded a five-year study of suicides in which Tharparkar emerged as the district with the highest number of reported cases between 2016 and 2020 — even though it has a population of 1.65 million, much lower than other districts in Sindh, including the seven that comprise the metropolis of Karachi. The report counts 79 cases of suicide in Tharparkar in 2020 and does not list numbers for previous years. Despite this, the district has the highest number of cases over the five-year period. Local police records indicate well over a hundred suicides in 2020, however. (The Sindh Mental Health Authority did not respond to requests to clarify the discrepancy.)

Seventy percent of Tharis who died by suicide in 2020 were under the age of 30

Statistics, therefore, provide only a sliver of insight into suicide in Pakistan — especially in Tharparkar, among the country’s least-developed districts.

Locals, however, have many stories. Less than a year after Babita’s death, two streets away from where she lived, a shopkeeper’s son-in-law died by suicide. Across the road from where he lived, in the new settlements atop the old sand dune by the new Mithi bypass, another young man, 22, did too. A month later, his next-door neighbor, a schoolgirl, 17, also died by suicide. In an older neighborhood of Mithi, a businessman whispered news of a friend’s son’s death by suicide. Further away, in the town of Chachro, near the Indian border, a young father threw his three sons — aged four, three, and three months — into an empty well, then jumped in after them.

The stories don’t end, but they do have a beginning. “I remember just one incident from when I was younger, about a woman in Mithi who flung herself into a well,” recalled one mother, whose grown son took his own life three years ago. When she was a girl, the cases were rare enough that each incident stood out, a story unto itself.

Now, however, it isn’t uncommon to hear of one every other week, to see photos of bodies circulating on Facebook and WhatsApp. When asked if she remembered when this started, the woman was unequivocal. “All these deaths, we only began hearing of them seven, eight years ago.”

‘Thar will transform’

In 2018, a television commercial began making the rounds in Pakistan. In many ways, it was standard government fare, muddled metaphors for progress (“the winds of knowledge will resound on all lips”) set against a rippling flute accompaniment intended to situate the viewer in an unspecified rural part of the country.

Produced by the Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company, a public-private venture under the ambit of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), it depicted several singers waxing poetic – in Urdu, Sindhi, Dhatki, and Mandarin – about the riches of Thar, specifically the 175 billion tons of subterranean coal that, in theory, could fuel the country for centuries. Against images of green landscapes, almost certainly digitally enhanced, and of children sloshing about in a small dam, they sang: “Thar badlega Pakistan (Thar will transform Pakistan).”

Tharparkar district — par kar means to cross over — is entirely desert, and belongs to a larger arid zone known as the Thar Desert that extends into India. In fact, only 15 percent of the Thar Desert is part of Pakistan.

For centuries, the region had a life of its own, separate from the rest of the subcontinent and contingent on caste hierarchies and patterns of rainfall. For nearly a century, seasonal migration was the warp and weft of desert life: Thari people, traditionally farmers and herders, cultivated bajra (millet) during the rainy season, a hardy small-grained cereal integral to the local diet since prehistoric times. After the summer harvest, with the onset of the dry season, most Tharis — especially “lower-caste” Bheel, Kohli, and Meghwar communities — would migrate to the irrigated plains of Sindh to harvest wheat. Up until the 1970s, Tharis scarcely dealt in cash. For their labour in the wheat fields, they were provided protection by landlords, grazing grounds for livestock, and allowed to collect wheat stubble to feed animals when they returned home to await the summer rains.

This ebb and flow of life in Tharparkar was recorded by the social researcher Arif Hasan in 1987 but, even at the time of writing, he noted that this way of life was dissipating. Tharparkar has historically been a Hindu-majority region, but the creation of Pakistan and subsequent wars with India upended old religious and caste hierarchies.

The introduction of more lucrative “cash” crops such as sugarcane clashed with the longstanding patterns of migration. When drought struck in the 1980s, NGOs and social workers entered the fray and with them paved roads, market goods and the cash economy. Still, for the rest of Pakistan, Thar was largely seen as a brown blip on the national map, a faraway land of camels, exotic clothes, and malnourished babies. Until, that is, the early 2010s, when the state decided to begin digging up the vast reserves of lignite coal underneath the desert.

Suddenly, in the national imagination, the desert morphed from deadwood to golden goose. Banks, mobile shops and petrol stations sprouted up. The network of roads became wider and denser.

Professionals from other parts of Pakistan, even from China, moved in for coal-related employment. Guesthouses sprung up along the new roads, designed to look like traditional Thar housing: round white huts with peaked roofs made of thatch, known as chaunras. Long gone were the days of bajre ki roti and lassi — you can now order “Chinese biryani” at local restaurants.

As for Mithi, according to Hasan, it grew by 200 percent in just five years.

Visiting in 2017, he noted that steel for reinforced concrete construction was in short supply and because of deforestation, local timber was no longer available. Many Tharis migrated to Mithi and other urban centers because their ancestral lands were acquired by the state for its various development projects. Some moved to avail new opportunities, and others because, as the climate grew more erratic, the old agrarian way of life became increasingly untenable. Coal exploitation will only serve to exacerbate this last trend, observers have pointed out. Since 2014, when the first coal power project was inaugurated, people have protested against land acquisition, neo-colonization, increased securitization, water security, and ecological disruption.

Thar badlega Pakistan. For now, the first part of the state’s battle cry has come to pass. Thar will transform.

Death and dust

Sonia was 17 when she took her own life, soon after sitting for her secondary school exams. She was bright and studious and loved poetry. She would painstakingly copy out her favorite Sindhi passages, tracing verses on lined paper torn from school notebooks. Those pages, rendered in a neat schoolgirlish hand, were pinned up on a wall in the family room. Next to them were letters that her sisters Geeta and Narmala, one older and one younger, wrote to her after her death.

There was a dust storm in Mithi the day I visited. Great gusts of wind ruffled the tops of thatched huts. Sonia’s father, a lanky man in a white kameez turned beige by the billowing sand, is quiet but affable. It happened in September 2021. The clock struck one, two, and then three in the morning. The girls finished watching a movie on their brother’s mobile phone and went to bed. Fifteen minutes later, says the girls’ father, he happened to wake up and found Sonia dead. She had hanged herself in one of the chaunras in the compound.

“We’re not the sort of family that hides things from each other,” he said, still grasping for an explanation.

Seventy percent of Tharis who died by suicide in 2020 were under the age of 30, according to data from the Sindh Mental Health Authority. More than half of those were teenagers. Bucking global patterns, more women and girls in the district died by suicide and, while Hindus constitute roughly 43 percent of its population, they accounted for 63 percent of deaths. Police data is slightly different but exhibits similar trends. The numbers aren’t disaggregated by caste, but local accounts indicate so-called “lower-caste” Hindus make up many of the deaths.

Sonia’s family are Meghwars, a caste historically associated with leather tanning. In the past half-century, as societal roles contingent on caste became less rigid in Tharparkar, Meghwars attained education at higher rates than other caste groups — so much so that by the early 2000s, according to Hasan, they constituted the majority of professionals in the district. Still, young Meghwars can’t fully shake off the burden of being Hindu and “lower-caste” — a double whammy in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.

“The media makes it seem there are opportunities in Thar now, but it’s complicated,” said Akash, a 26-year-old Meghwar activist. “You have all these unemployed young people running around with degrees in electrical engineering, mining, petroleum and gas.” But even amid the ongoing bonanza of resource exploitation in Thar, most skilled and semi-skilled jobs appear to have been given to outsiders, leaving locals to become security guards, construction workers, and drivers. There is little else for them to do.

Accelerated social change

A few hundred meters up the dune from Sonia’s house lived Sajan, who also died by suicide. He was 17, like Sonia, and the eldest son in his family. For four years, since his father’s death, he worked at a garment factory in Karachi. Last August, he took leave from work and came to Mithi for a few days. On the fourth day, he announced his departure. He changed into a white cotton shalwar kameez, shaved his beard, combed his hair and bid farewell to everyone. Half an hour later, he was dead by the water pump.

Unlike Sonia’s father, who is quietly contemplative, Sajan’s mother’s grief has hardened into anger. “He’s blackened his father’s grave,” she said. “I have tensions too, but if I were to kill myself, I’d just burden the people I leave behind. All he’s left behind are his photos — what do we do with those, just look at them?”

She showed them to me. He had floppy hair, wore a clunky watch and kept his kameez collar popped and buttons open. Pink appeared to be his favorite color.

“His problem,” said his mother, in bitter exasperation, “was that he was too jazbaati.”

This is a common refrain among older Tharis: that newer generations are jazbaati or emotional, easily provoked, exceedingly thin-skinned. When older people talk of suicide, they veer towards outrageous anecdotes, narrated in a tone of bewildered dismay: the 10-year-old who, scolded by his father, flung his schoolbag aside and hanged himself; the teenager denied a mobile phone who clambered onto a pylon and let himself be electrocuted.

There were times when people were forced to subsist entirely on crushed leaves. But there is a particular kind of despair that arises from expecting a different life, working towards it, and still finding it just beyond reach. That is how young people in Thar feel these days.

“We’re the ones who saw real hardship,” said Sonia’s father, alluding to Thar’s past famines.

It is true, said Akash — there were times when people were forced to subsist entirely on crushed leaves. But there is a particular kind of despair that arises from expecting a different life, working towards it, and still finding it just beyond reach, he says — that is how young people in Thar feel these days.

Research from other Asian countries has also linked suicide to social upheaval. Perhaps tellingly, the district in Pakistan most associated with high rates of suicide is Ghizer in the mountainous north. Comprehensive data is not available but one study estimated female suicide rates between 2000 and 2004 to be 14.9 per 100,000 inhabitants, and as high as 61.07 per 100,000 for women between the ages of 15 and 24. Like Thar, Ghizer district was historically isolated but has recently undergone swift social change, girded by expanding road and telecommunication networks and an accompanying boom in tourism.

Akash, who accompanied me to interviews in Mithi, pointed out that many of the families of the deceased only migrated to the town in the past decade or so. The disorientation that can come with exchanging a peripatetic rural life for a settled urban one is sometimes – for younger people – accompanied by greater social control.

As social ties become looser, for instance, according to Akash, the longstanding custom of watta satta — involving the simultaneous marriage of brother and sister pairs from two households — has increased. “There’s declining trust between families and so it acts as a kind of collateral,” he explained. “A man will think twice before beating up his wife knowing that his sister might receive the same treatment as retaliation from her husband.”

What that means, however, is that young people rarely have a say in whom they marry. For Hindus, moreover, divorce is never an option. Widows are forbidden from remarrying, and Akash says it is rare for widowers to do so, too. Moreover, in a departure from Muslim Pakistani communities, where marriages normally take place within the clan — more than 60 percent of unions are between first or second cousins — Hindus marry within their caste but outside their subcaste. This comes with its own complications, says Akash.

A year ago, in a village an hour away from Mithi, a 13-year-old girl and 17-year-old boy hanged themselves from a tree in the middle of the night. The girl was betrothed; her wedding was in two weeks. The boy was set to be engaged in a few days. His family said he never asked to marry that girl or anyone else, for that matter.

“Of course he didn’t,” said Akash. “They belonged to the same subcaste — it was impossible.”

This isn’t a new development: in the past, said one doctor in Mithi, if you ever heard of a case of suicide, there was only one intoxicant to blame: thwarted love. But something else has changed. It is not just stories of suicide that are everywhere in Thar — so are photos.

Exposure to suicide can compel susceptible others to do the same — a phenomenon known as suicide contagion. Research suggests at least 5 percent of suicides by young people are influenced by this, a cause of such concern that in the past, some countries (such as Norway) forbade media from reporting on suicide altogether. In Thar, however, not only do local papers carry uncensored photos of suicides, images are published in NGO reports and circulate freely on Facebook and WhatsApp, contributing to its normalisation. According to the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 93 percent of Tharis now have access to mobile internet.

Sonia would come across such photos on Facebook, recalled her sister Geeta. She’d be alarmed. “She’d look at them and ask out loud: ‘How are people able to do this?’”

A family’s desperation

At the district police headquarters the morning after I met Chaman, Constable Gomoon Lal scrolled through his WhatsApp messages. “Any incident, when it occurs, comes to me here on this phone,” he explained, then without warning, thrust the phone in my direction, and zoomed in on an image of a dead woman.

“See, she’s wearing a gold necklace.”

Gomoon Lal was making the case that suicides in Thar aren’t the result of poverty. If that were so, he reasoned, the woman would have sold her jewelry, instead of taking it to the grave. As he saw it, domestic spats were the cause.

“Look, this is what happens: the husband comes home, he tells his wife to make him food, she takes her time — mood ki malik, mercurial, you know — so he hits her. Shortly after, he finds her hanging from the ceiling fan.”

He paused.

“Or sometimes, a husband will strangle his wife and make it look like a suicide. That happens, too.”

You hear this often in Tharparkar: the prevalence of suicide can let you get away with murder. Chaman Lal believes this is what happened to his sister and brother-in-law: Babita and Doongar, he insisted, were murdered — the former lured to the house to be abused, found by the latter who tried to protect her — their deaths staged as suicides. On the day of the incident, by the time he’d rushed back to Mithi, the police had already concluded its investigation. The family’s protestations of foul play fell on deaf ears.

“For five days, they wouldn’t even register an FIR,” said Chaman, referring to the First Information Report that aggrieved parties must file in order to initiate a criminal investigation in Pakistan and other South Asian countries.

In desperation, the family placed Babita and Doongar’s bodies in the middle of Mithi’s busiest intersection and staged a dharna, a protest, until the police relented and made some arrests. Within months, says Chaman, the accused were released on bail. The family doesn’t have the money to pursue the case further.

Gomoon Lal, the police officer, was adamant that Babita and Doongar died by suicide. Police are required to carry out a medical and psychological autopsy in the event of a suicide — the former entailing an examination of the body, the latter detailed interviews with family and close associates — although this procedure is rarely executed properly.

In this instance, Gomoon Lal said, the medical examination indicated that Babita had been sexually assaulted and on that basis, the police detained suspects, including a rickshaw-driver cousin who all parties agreed was a nefarious fellow and involved in some capacity. But further forensic analysis indicated that the DNA found on Babita belonged to Doongar so, he continued, the suspects were let go.

“The truth is, woh chalti thi,” he said, “she was easy.”

“Okay,” I said. “But what happened? The police has to figure out whether it is murder or suicide, right?”

Gomoon Lal gave me a long look.

“It was suicide,” he repeated. “The brother-in-law, he didn’t like his wife, so he would pursue this one instead.”

‘I dream about him’

Time has taken on a strange, bifurcated quality for Chaman ever since Babita and Doongar died: He is acutely aware of its passing, knowing that answers become more elusive with each day. But he also feels weighed down, haunted. “I feel like my brain has slowed down,” he said. “It’s — I don’t know, it’s just not working right.” He never returned to his job in Hyderabad and remained unemployed for many months after.

With the caveat that numbers are likely grossly underestimated, nearly 20,000 suicides took place in Pakistan in 2019, according to the WHO. For every suicide, also according to the WHO, there are between 10 and 20 attempts and a hundred who experience suicidal thoughts but don’t act on them. Roughly 0.4 percent of Pakistan’s already meagre healthcare budget was devoted to mental health in 2008 – more recent figures are not available. That year, there were 342 psychiatrists and 478 psychologists in the country whose current population is close to 221 million. Up to 20 percent of psychiatrists typically immigrate to other countries within five years of completing their training.

To address this shortage, the Sindh Mental Health Authority recently launched a pilot project in Badin, the district with the second-highest number of suicides in the province, equipping female front-line health workers with a mobile health app called mPareshan — pareshan means anxious in Urdu — that will allow them to monitor people exhibiting mental distress. The facility isn’t available in Tharparkar, although a “telehelp” service has been announced.

Chaman hasn’t talked to a professional about how he has been feeling. In Thar, many communities consult local spiritual healers called bopas, of whom medical professionals aren’t entirely disapproving. For milder bouts of anxiety and depression, a doctor in Mithi explained, sometimes all you need is some reassurance and pastoral care. Chaman hasn’t consulted a bopa either, though. As the social fabric of Thar changes, the culture of seeking out bopas is waning too.

After Doongar’s death, his wife moved back to her brother’s — Chaman’s — home, hounded out by hateful in-laws who wouldn’t let her use the stove or the bathroom, accusing her of being cursed. She broke down as she recalled this, weeping quietly.

“I remember him all the time,” she said. “I dream about him.”

She has four children, all of whom came back with her — the eldest, an 11-year-old girl, the youngest a happy-go-lucky toddler. Doongar loved them all.

“We didn’t have any problems,” she insisted. “He had his own motorcycle.”

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Courtesy: Pulitzer Center/ Al-Jazeera

The post The Mystifying Rise of Suicide in Pakistan’s Thar Desert first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Islamkot

More than 3000 patients were provided free of cost consultation and medicines through mental health camps organized in all seven Talukas of Tharparkar.

A team of leading experts of mental health from Karachi and Hyderabad examined the patients in remote parts of the district. The camps were jointly organized by Sindh Mental Health Authority, Health Department, District Administration Tharparkar, Jinnah Post-graduate Medical Centre, Dow University Karachi, Liaquat University Jamshoro, Karachi University, Sir Cowasji Institute-Hyderabad, Sindh University, PPHI and Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company and Thar Foundation.

Tharparkar registered a large number of suicide cases in recent years.

“Thar Foundation has been closely working with Sindh Mental Health Authority on research on Psychological Autopsy of suicide cases in Tharparkar. Additionally, both organizations have been extending support to several patients in the district. These camps are a major activity in providing assistance to people facing mental health challenges,” says press release issued by Thar Foundation on Monday.

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The post Free Mental Health Camps organized in Tharparkar District first appeared on Sindh Courier.

From very earlier the suicide incidents are occurring in Tharparkar, but for about last two three years a huge increase has been noticed in these incidents. Every year in Mirpurkhas division and particularly in Thar, reportedly, more than five hundred people commit suicide. This include the people of both genders and from every age. People who are suffering from various social, cultural, economic and mental problems, are said to have been committing the suicide, being an easy path to get rid of their sufferings.

In this regard, the concerned authorities have no empathy toward these suffering souls which eventually lead them to take their own life. Now it has become a social curse and crime which is taking the life of individuals rampantly. So, the Sindh government and its Health department have to take measures in order to stop this scourge.

Last year, Sindh Mental Health Authority (SMHA) had conducted Psychological Autopsy of over thirty suicide cases and later released a detailed report according to which the people in Thar had been suffering from various social, cultural, economic and mental problems. It was expected that the government of Sindh would take certain measures to address the serious issue of committing suicides in the light of SMHA report, but alas no concrete measures have been taken yet and the poor people continue to end their life.

Ghansham Narwani

Islamkot, Tharparkar Sindh

The post Suicide cases in Tharparkar: Authorities have no empathy toward the suffering souls first appeared on Sindh Courier.

Mithi, Tharparkar

Some 512 people have ended their life by committing suicide in Sindh’s desert district Tharparkar in five years from 2017 to October 2021.

This was disclosed at a seminar on ‘Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Psychological Problems’ held here. “The main cause of committing suicide is the mental disorder,” the speakers said.

Sharing the data, the speakers said that 35 percent of the world’s population suffers from mental health problems and around seven million people commit suicide every year. “Suicides are committed every 40 seconds.”

“On an average 30,000 people in Pakistan have commit suicide within a few years,” they said.

Seminar on Mental Health, Suicide Prevention and Psychological Problems was jointly organized by District Administration Tharparkar, Pakistan Rangers, Thar Foundation, Health Department, Dow University and Sindh Mental Authority.

The purpose of conducting seminars is to help people with mental health and suicide prevention.

Speakers said that the incidence of suicide can be reduced by promoting mental health and said that life is a great blessing of God Almighty and to live a full life in this world.

“It is important to create the mindset that they should not end their precious lives by committing suicide, the speakers added. “We have to refer to the lessons of Islamic regarding the suicide.”

Sector Commander Thar Rangers Umair Khidr, Wing Commander Col. Muhammad Zahid, Deputy Commissioner Tharparkar Muhammad Nawaz Sohoo, SSP Tharparkar Sardar Hassan Niazi, GM Thar Foundation Naseer Memon, Dr. Shahnawaz Dal of People’s University Nawabshah, Psychology  Department of Sindh University Jamshoro. Assistant Professor Shiraz Sheikh, District Health Officer Dr. Gordhan Das, Mufti Muhammad Adam Samejoo, Pandit, Civil Society, Additional Director Social Welfare Abid Channa, Deputy Director Mulji Mall, PPP Ladies Wing officials, nursing school students, school Students, journalists and people from all walks of life attended in large numbers. (PR)

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The post 512 People committed suicide in Tharparkar within 5 years first appeared on Sindh Courier.