Girl Donates Eyes before Killing Herself

Many times, news which could make us get out of our beds are buried in the inside pages of the newspapers. On 11th of April, 2007 there was a news report on the 8th page of Hindustan Times, Mumbai edition. Title made me shaken: "Girl donates eyes before killing herself."

In Lucknow, a girl named Divya Pandey (real name), committed suicide. She was a 12th standard student, and was to appear for her biotechnology exam. Divya's mother says: She was a very bright student, but was not satisfied with her performance. A day before she took this drastic step, she said to me that she doesn't remember anything that she had learnt and would not be able to score above 90 percent in class 12th. In her suicide note, she wrote that she wanted to donate her eyes. Her parents, though distressed at her death, decided to honor her last wish and ensured all procedure were followed immediately. Her body, which was discovered in the morning, was taken to KGMU, doctors harvested her cornea and within days, two people were able to see the world, thanks to Divya.

Donating eyes

This is the first such case in my memory. I have never heard if someone else in the past planned to benefit the society in this manner, the society in fact is the reason for their distressed conditions. It shows that Divya was in her sane state at the time of suicide. She knew what she was going to do. Still, if she chose to hang herself, it was not her failure only. It is the failure of the society in which she lived.

Worth thinking over

Should we stop after declaring it as a shocking incident, an unfortunate event and expressing solidarity with the family? Two things come to my mind immediately:

The state of cruel competition.
The expectations from the family members.

State of cruel competition

All of us know how brutal is the competition to get admission in the engineering and medical colleges like IITs, NITs and AIIMS. In IIT JEE, the success rate is 1 in 60. More than 3,00,000 students appeared for JEE-2006, for total 5500 seats. Around 5,25,000 candidates wrote the AIEEE – 2006 of which around 45,000 people in the open category have been called for counseling. And the matter of fact is that we have very few such institutes of excellence in India, and almost everyone wants to get in there only. In this cut throat competition, the students are so much tense and winding under pressure that if they sense a possibility of failure, they find their world falling over and in a state of depression, they take this decision as an escape from the hell.

Expectations from family

Parents these days are sending their children to schools at a very early age. They feel proud that their kids are already there when at the same age, they used to play at home all the day. Next, we have already heard and faced the problems in getting admissions in good schools. Schools charge huge sum of money for admissions, in the name of anything. Parents of Kangaroo Kids, Mumbai fumed in protests when the school hiked the fee for KG students in Mumbai is Rs 36000 [Ref 1]. If parents have to pay such exorbitant amounts, naturally their expectations will be proportional.

Also, the practice of comparing our children with those of others in our neighbor is an old one. There was a scene in the movie Ta ra rum pum, a young couple with two children was moving into a new flat, when an already residing couple met them on the stairs. When the gentleman says How lovely kids, her wife says Apnaa bhi koi kam nahi hai. If the neighbor's son has won a prize in recitation, your son will have to pay for it.

Analysis of suicide cases in South Delhi

In a paper titled “Suicide among children and adolescents in South Delhi (1991-2000)” [Ref 2], the investigators Lalwani Sanjeev, Sharma GA SK, Kabra SK, Girdhar Shalini and Dogra TD from Departments of Forensic Medicine, AIIMS, New Delhi, report the following key observations:

Out of 222 cases of children and adolescent who died by suicide, majority 55.4% of the victims were girls. This shows that the girl students have a greater pressure to perform and are more susceptible to be depressed.

Commonest age group involved was 15-18 years in both the sexes. This is the time when students appear for their board exams (10/12).

Maximum (56.4%) cases were reported in the months of March-July. The psychological problems due to studies, performance in examination and declaration of results are higher during these months.

The vast majority of suicide cases had applied hard methods with hanging which reflects a higher degree of auto aggressive behavior and determination towards self destruction.

What to do? Can we leave the things as they are?

In my opinion, nothing can be more useful in curbing the suicidal tendencies among children is parental support. If Divya knew that her world did not end with her less than 90% marks, she would have accepted her bad performance as part of life. Its time to think and correct ourselves before it is too late.

References:

1. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/498230.cms

2. http://www.ijppediatricsindia.org/article.asp?issn=0019-5456;year=2004;volume=71;issue=8;spage=701;epage=703;aulast=Lalwani

3. http://in.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/14sc.htm

4. http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=121483