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From: Anthony_Maillard@Mdd.comm.mot.com (Anthony Maillard)
Subject: T&T (If Yuh Int'rested)
Followup-To: soc.culture.caribbean
Organization: Motorola, Mobile Data Division - Seattle, WA
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 03:18:59 GMT

T&T: Suicide Capital Of The Caribbean

by Avian Joseph

Port of Spain, Nov. 20 (ips) --  At 22 years old, Amy is happy to be alive.
not so long ago, when she was a teenager, Amy had tried to commit suicide
over a love affair gone sour. ''I tried to do it ... there was so much pain
in the relationship because of the betrayal that I just wanted to stop the
hurt. I thought to end the pain I had to end my life. but it was a stupid
thing to do,'' she said.
Like Amy, scores of Trinidadians attempt suicide each year. Unlike Amy,
many do not live to speak of it.
Since the beginning of this month at least four suicides have been recorded
by the police here. In the last five years 817 Trinidadians have killed
themselves, according to official statistics.  Between January and
September this year there were 64 suicides.
These days, suicides have been attracting great media interest in this
southern Caribbean state of 1.2 million people, mainly because the victims
have gradually become numbered among the wealthier class.
This year's suicide victims have included two popular actors, 21 year old
Kathryn Squance and 28 year old Anthony Seyjagat; Varoun Permanand, son of
a high court judge and Bhavana Chandu Lal, daughter of the government
forensic pathologist.
Trinidadians have now begun talking about an epidemic of suicides and radio
call-in programmes, newspaper letters to the editor and the church have
begun calling for more and improved counseling facilities to offer help to
troubled individuals.
Public opinion is that suicides have increased and done so because the
church is failing the majority of Trinidadians and the traditional West
Indian family is disintegrating because parents emigrate to seek better
lives, leaving their children without proper supervision. Many of the
victims are young children, but, according to the police, suicide victims
this year were between the ages of 11 and 82 years old.
The main weapons of those bent on killing themselves are the rope (hanging)
and gramoxone, a weedicide used by nearly all of the country's farmers. at
7.50 US. dollars for 907 grams, the chemical is relatively cheap and can be
bought over the counter.
''The growing number of suicides is greatly related to the economic
problems with which the country has struggled over the last decade or so
... problems such as unemployment ... and which have spilled over to affect
the social and family life,'' says Dr Rampersad Parasram, psychiatric
specialist at the St. Ann's hospital, an institution for the mentally ill.
''People have simply lost hope,'' said Lionel Remy, a psychiatric social
worker at the hospital, located in this city.
Over the last ten years, the Trinidad economy contracted sharply, resulting
in the halving of living standards. Real gdp, throughout the 1980s, fell by
one third, with an average annual decline of 4.2 percent. gdp per capita
fell from 7,226 US. dollars in 1982 to 3,246 US. dollars in 1989.
Unemployment in the first six months of this year stood at 20. 2 percent
compared to 10 percent in 1982.
According to official figures more suicide victims come from the Indian
ethnic grouping. Dr Celia Ramcharand, psychiatrist at the San Fernando
General hospital, says that she has seen 206 persons who had attempted
suicide in the first six months of 1992. The majority were girls between 15
and 25 who were not serious about dying but who just wanted some attention,
she said.
San Fernando hospital is located in the south of Trinidad and takes in
patients from the rural central Trinidad area where the majority of suicide
cases have been found.
police statistics say of the 64 suicides so far this year, 48 are
Indo-Trinidadians and last year, 65 of the 87 people who killed themselves
were of Indian descent.
Dr. Parasram noted the higher suicide rate among Indians was due to
feelings of marginalisation, changing family values and the role of
alcoholism. The majority of the victims are from poor, rural areas where
alcoholism is rife and traditional, conservative East Indian values are
being challenged by modern liberal thought, he said.
He noted too that a recent increase in suicide among Afro-Trinidadians was
confined mainly to the urban ghettoes where residents were as poor or
poorer than the rural East Indian.