Girl ends life,10 attempt suicide

Pulwama, Feb 4 : In a tragic incident, a girl committed suicide in held Kashmir’s Awantipora area, while 10 others made an abortive bid to end their lives after class 12th examinations results were announced.  

Shazia Khan, 18, daughter of Ghulam Rasool Khan, of Padgampora consumed some poisonous substance soon after she came to know about the result of her senior secondary school exam. “The girl was apparently upset after failing to qualify the examination,” a police official told Greater Kashmir. 

“The girl had consumed rat poison. She was rushed to the Awantipora hospital where from she was shifted to SMHS Srinagar where doctors declared her brought dead,” the official added.

Pertinently, last month a teenage girl from Kokernag area of Islamabad district had also ended her life by consuming poison after she failed in the secondary school examination. The girl had called her father before consuming poison and told him that she had worked hard and was expecting good results but could not believe that she had failed.

Meanwhile ten students made an abortive bid to end their life in the Valley for failing in 12th class Board Examination.

Official sources said the Valley’s prime specialty, SMHS hospital received around 10 cases of attempted suicides by the unsuccessful students out of which two were put on ventilator in critical condition.

According to sources students had mostly chosen to consume poisonous substances like Oxgano-Phosphate, rodenticides or high dose of sedatives depending upon the availability.
 The Causality Medical Officer (CMO), Dr Altaf said the hospital had registered only six suicide attempt cases since out of which two were put on ventilator in critical condition.
 However, he admitted that the cases might be higher.

“Most of the times people don’t report to us due to societal taboos and sense of guilt attached to it. The remaining patients either flee the hospital soon after the recovery or don’t register themselves,” he said.

As per Valley psychiatrists the tendency for self-harm (suicides) is directly related to huge parental and societal expectation of performance in formal education.

“Children who don’t somehow fit in the routine formal education set-up face a lot of stress, humiliation and challenge to their self-esteem, sometimes resulting in such extreme behavior,” said a known psychiatrist, Dr Arshad Hussain.

He said it was high time for us to realize that everyone does not necessarily fit into the scheme of things in the prevailing education system. “We have got to accept and love our children, letting them take what are termed as successes and failures as learning experiences,” he said.

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SA/EN