Who cares if I live or die?

By Carol Aloysius

It was the unending beating by her husband that put the final nail in the coffin. Unable to endure his brutal assaults, for Sumana 24, a young wife and mother of two, there was only one way to escape from her daily nightmare. She would end her life.

While that first attempt at suicide failed, she was determined to go ahead with her desperate decision when she found living with an abusive alcoholic husband who beat her on a daily basis became unbearable.

“She had kept a collection of kaneru seeds hidden inside her mud hut, and showed them to me when I first met her in her little home in the village. She refused to give them to me saying, “This is all I have to escape from my miserable existence”, Lakshmi, Directress of the Sumithrayo Rural Program, and a Volunteer at Sri Lanka Sumithrayo for many decades, recalls ten years on….

“So I did what I usually do with distressed people suchas Sumana who have suicidal thoughts. I put my arms around her and hugged her. I let her know I was there to listen to her and that I cared for her. That simple gesture helped her release her inner turmoil. As she broke down in a flood of tears, I let her cry out her pain, anger and despair for as long as she wished. It was an emotional moment for both of us.”

Suicidal thoughts

“ It is unbelievable how just putting one’s arms around someone who has lost her self esteem, can help a person overcome suicidal thoughts”, she says in retrospect. “By hugging Sumana at a time when her self esteem was at a new low because her overwhelming grief had blinded her to anything beyond her immediate situation, and listening to her, I showed her that I valued her as a person and cared for her, even though she had felt that no one cared whether she lived or died.

More visits to Sumana’s mud hut, helped forge a close rapport based on trust between the two women. “Once she realised I was her friend and not someone who wanted to pry into her family secrets, she opened up. She told me that her husband, a casual labourer mistrusted her and suspected her of being unfaithful to him. Hence the daily beatings. “I have two little children and I spend the entire day inside this hut looking after them and cooking his meals, but he still accuses me of being unfaithful”, she says.

Lakshmi‘s strategy was to befriend her husband as well so that the couple could discuss the matter openly. Initially he rejected my efforts. Then one day he greeted me with a smile, and his wife happily told me he was cooking the noonday meal for the family, and was now drinking less and had stopped beating her. Her husband also informed me he had given Sumana permission to go to the Middle East to earn money to build a proper house for them, and that the grandmother would look after the kids till she returned. I was happy for them. What this young couple needed at the time was coping strategies, which I was able to discuss with them. They found their own solutions” Lakshmi says in retrospect. “We don’t offer advice or therapy. We give those in need of our help emotional support. That’s how Sumithrayo operates.”

As she explains,“Sumithrayo offers an alternative, to people when things go wrong and life becomes too much to cope with. As befrienders we are there when no one else cares, listens or tries to understand them”, she said. These principles she says are based entirely on the principles of Chad Varah, founder of Samaritans (being a friend in need,) whose overseas branches came to be later known as Befrienders Worldwide.

Dedicated volunteer

“It is the Samaritan Principles and Practices, that Sumithrayo founder, Joan de Mel, a former Samaritan who worked with Chad Varah followed, and which Sumithrayo still abide by”, says Mala, another dedicated volunteer and befriender from Sumithrayo.

“The primary objective of our organisation is to prevent suicide by befriending people who are lonely, distressed and in despair over diverse issues in their lives such as broken relationships, marital difficulties, infidelity, other family problems, drug dependency sexual concerns and other personal issues, Individuals who carry a burden they cannot share with anyone. We give them a listening ear, show them we are completely non judgemental and accepting of all situations and peoples”, she explains.

One of the main challenges these dedicated volunteers face is sometimes getting lonely unhappy individuals to open up.

Mala cites one case where a teenager whose studies had been disrupted by constant bickering between her parents had almost driven the young girl to the verge of suicide.

“Eighteen year old Rupa visited one of our Urban centres recently. She came alone and sat in front of me without looking at my face. She remained silent for a long time and I didn’t wish to force her to talk. So I told her I was going to the next room to make her a cup of tea and before I left, I gave her a blank sheet of paper and gently asked her to write how she feels. When I returned, she silently handed me the piece of paper on which she had drawn what looked liked a small pizza. When I asked her what it meant, she grabbed the paper from me and began furiously scribbling on it, as the words came tumbling out.“My problem is my parents”, she told me. “Their daily verbal battles have prevented me from concentrating on my studies and I know that I will fail my law examination if they don’t stop. Can you help me? She whispered and began to sob. I held her hand and let her cry trying to understand what she was telling me through her tears. Much later a more relaxed and calm girl asked me if she could bring her parents the next day.

Daughter’s misery

Rupa returned with them a day later. The mother and father were befriended separately and both were very distraught that they had contributed to their daughter’s misery. The parents realised for the first time that their constant fighting often over trivial things upset their children. The husband complained his wife was paying too much attention to their two children, and neglecting him. The wife said he used to shout at her when she failed to cook some of his favourite spicy dishes. “We didn’t realise it was causing so much distress to our daughter”, they admitted. By unburdening all the pent up feelings Rupa had within her she was able to see that keeping herself closed inside her room would get her no where and that expressing her fears to her mother and father would have been a better option.

Lakshmi and Mala agree that many problems that trigger suicidal thoughts start of as trivial matters, which could be blown out of proportion to trigger suicidal thoughts if the individuals concerned are already unhappy and feel they have no one to talk to who cares or understands them. As they point out, “A common belief is that people who talk about killing themselves never actually do it. In fact 70 percent of people who have killed themselves have talked about it before hand and had no one paying any attention.” Lakshmi also notes that while the suicide rates have definitely plummeted from the very high rates in the early 1990s, data on ‘attempted suicides’ collected by the Sumithrayo Rural Program from hospital admissions in selected rural hospitals in the southern and north western provinces suggested the number had risen, over the past decade.

The Rural program run by Sumithrayo is one of the organisations’s biggest success stories, in suicide prevention.

The program which celebrated its 16th anniversary since its inception in a tiny room in a village Buddhist temple (Swarnagiri Hettipola) has now expanded its work to over 90 villages in the north western and southern provinces.

The program has won an International Accreditation Award at the IASP Convention in Beijing; China in 2011 and was the recipient of a similar award in the Asia Pacific region in Hongkong in 2008. The results of a pilot study in collaboration with Oxford University on Secure Storage of Pesticides to Reduce Suicides in Rural Sri Lanka was published in 2008, and was followed by a similar four year study supported by the WHO, the results of which will be published shortly.

Considering the fact that Sumithrayo began in a very small way, in 1974 in two tiny rooms at Deans Road Maradana, this is indeed an achievement.

Remain anonymous

Now in its 40th year of existence, the organisers say over 200 people contact the 11 Sumithrayo centres in the island every week. They either visit, telephone or write in their problems. Not all the callers are suicidal. “You don’t have to be suicidal to talk to Sumithrayo. The majority in fact simply want someone they don’t know and don’t even see sharing their problems, fears and anxieties, on the basis of confidentiality.

The volunteers try to remain anonymous as far as possible.”