Under Section 325 of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC), both suicide and attempted suicide are currently considered criminal offences, with the latter punishable either by a jail term of up to a year, or a fine, or both.
All reported cases of suicide or any such attempts are thereby mechanically linked to law enforcement. In practice, it is rare for such FIRs to be registered with the police, but harassing and extorting money from victims of attempted suicide is not uncommon.
The criminalisation of suicidal behaviour is one of the main reasons that people do not seek help for the psychological problem that may have precipitated the act.
The World Health Organisation reported over 13,000 suicides from Pakistan in 2012; extrapolating from this data, a conservative estimate would put the number of suicide attempts at 150,000 to 300,000.
Other research has shown that most Pakistanis who attempt suicide are young (under the age of 30), with women outnumbering men by a ratio of at least 3:1 or 4:1.
Most people who attempt suicide suffer from a mental disorder, such as depressive disorder, and the attempt is commonly precipitated as a result of interpersonal difficulties or some other stressful factor. Most mental disorders, including depression,
are treatable. And most people who end up taking their own life have a history of previous self-harm. Therefore, all suicide attempts need to be brought to medical attention. If only the woman, whose case has been mentioned in this article, had been offered timely help, three lives could have been saved.
