Seetha’s death reveals hidden injury of the underclass

By CT Wong (CPI)

Suicide, of whatever cause, is always tragic. The iconic self-burning to death of the Buddhist monk was meant to turn the world’s attention on war-torn Vietnam. It was a cry of pain, a cry for help and a cry of protest.

In common with the monk’s suicide, housewife R. Seetha’s death was foremost a cry of pain, although it touchingly telegraphed to the world her community’s cry for help.

The pain within her was so unbearable that she wanted an end – to the pain of being human, the pain of being born an Indian in Malaysia. Thus her suicide at age 33 was an unintentional cry of protest. To see her tragic death as a cry for help instead as a legal or moral wrong, we need to understand the deeper underlying causes.

Before going into arguments of causal attribution, let’s first examine the moral condemnation directed at Seetha for giving paraquat to her children to drink.

Homicide-and-then-suicide cases are very rare. The homicidal aspect tends to overshadow the underlying causes of hopelessness in suicide.

In fact, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, “…Studies have shown that the perpetrators have profiles that resemble individuals who commit suicide rather than those who commit homicide – the role of untreated depression in their stories is often lost in the news account.”

Moral condemnation serves only to distance ourselves from suicide victims. It does not help to prevent future suicides because any simplistic moral categorization of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ does not tell us much about the profound pain of their despair.

Mother wished to pre-empt cruelty

We do not know exactly what was going on in Seetha’s mind before she took that final, fatal step.

James Gilligan, an American psychiatrist, wrote about the tragic violence in his own family history. He had a relative who was a violent rancher that repeatedly hit his son. The rancher’s wife was believed to have fed their son a piece of poisoned pie. Gilligan argued that the mother was very possibly trying to prevent any further cruelty inflicted on the child. This was the tragedy of violence.

A central issue of the Seetha controversy is how we attribute causes.

The death of her brother Surendran in an alleged police shootout was reported to have led to Seetha’s depression and subsequent suicide attempt (Malaysiakini, Nov 15, 2009).

It is untrue that the shootout had nothing to do with Seetha’s death because all these events, like falling dominoes, happened in close proximity – the nearer the events in time, the higher the correlation or causation. Also, human beings do not exist in a vacuum but in relationships through a web of interconnectedness.

Two persons in the same family facing a traumatic event may react differently because they each have differing interpretations of that same episode.

So it is not true either that her brother’s killing at the hands of the police is the direct cause of Seetha’s death. (Police fearing bad publicity had apparently forced Seetha to sign a declaration stating that her suicide attempt had nothing to do with Surendran’s demise, their father claimed.)

Evidence-based psychological perspective

Understanding the complexity of human behaviour, in particular abnormal or maladaptive responses in causal terms, is an enormous challenge. Hence, risk factors as variables correlated with abnormal outcomes are often used by psychology researchers. It is however important to note that correlation is not causation.

The causes underlying suicide and suicide attempts are many and complex. The factors that place individuals at risk mutually interact with each other and can be classified as follows: psychiatric disorders, demographics (age, sex, social-economic status, employment status, occupation and marital status) and personality (impulsivity).

We do not know the exact causes of Seetha committing suicide but a single precipitating event alone does not explain the whys nor do the underlying social conditions alone. Chronic and triggering risk factors both need to be taken into account.

For example, there is the perpetuating risk factor like being born into a racial group subjected to discrimination, the predisposing risk factor of suffering from depression, the contributory factor of easy access of poisons, the acute risk factor of hopelessness and entrapment and the “precipitating or triggering stimuli of any real or anticipated event causing or threatening shame, guilt, despair, humiliation, unacceptable loss of face or status.” (adapted from source: American Association of Suicidology).

According to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, basing on psychological autopsy studies done in various countries over almost 50 years, there is a consistent pattern where “90 % of people who die by suicide are suffering from one or more psychiatric disorders.” These include “major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, alcohol or substance abuse, schizophrenia and personality disorder.”

Of all the psychiatric disorders, depression is the most important in suicide.

Cycle of hopelessness

Most depressed people do not commit suicide. However, most people who attempt or complete suicide were depressed. Depression as a psychiatric or psychological illness plays a major role in suicidal behaviour. It also has a social basis.

Unfortunately, they are often not diagnosed or treated either for lack of knowledge or resources to cope with psychiatric illnesses. The better-off can get immediate and long-term help.

However, as the poor have difficulty in making ends meet, any mental illnesses or developmental disabilities occurring in the family would impose an immense financial and psychological burden on them. And so the illness spirals downward.

The plight of the Native Americans shows the relationship between suicide and the destructive forces of prejudice and discrimination.

The American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology (vol. 38, 2007) revealed that “…After generations of displacement, forced assimilation, poverty and neglect, many American Indians are trapped in a cycle of hopelessness that often leads to substance abuse, violence and in many cases suicide. The suicide rate for American Indians is two and a half times higher than the national average…”

The chronic socioeconomic deprivation of the Indian community has been well articulated in the article ‘Sad road to Seetha’s suicide’ by Helen Ang (Malaysiakini, Nov 18, 2009). It depicts how a community has been broken up since the 1980s when the plantations were fragmented and workers evicted, with the effect that the young generation was displaced to urban settlements and creating slums.

Social support, social reform

Deprivation has not only a material but a psychological dimension as well.

Breaking up a community humiliates and shames its members. This institutionalized coercion also deprives the socially dispossessed of their dignity, self-respect and ethnic pride as a minority.

This is the hidden injury of the underclass. When we look deep into the Indian problem, we find that it is a question of human desire to seek dignity. When we look deep into the human problem, we meet the Indian problem. Suffering is suffering is suffering; it doesn’t really matter what you label it.

To understand and to intervene in suicide, we need to know the underlying causes and the precipitating causes.

If we attribute the causes to only within Seetha, we are just blaming the victim. If it is all her fault, then there is no necessity to identify the causes of suicide or to prevent future occurrences. However, if we attribute causes existing external to her, then there is the necessity of providing social support, of advocating social reforms.

Bullets can kill criminals or even the innocents but not the social conditions that create shame and violence. Racial discrimination inflicts deep psychological scars of shaming upon the psyche of the discriminated. Ultimately, it is socioeconomic equity, not structural violence or coercion, that will reduce shame and hence violence.

Psycho-socio education on suicide and suicide intervention is important for the public so that those in need are not socially isolated, especially when mental illness still remains a stigma.

Also of critical importance is keeping intact and functional the spiritual and cultural traditions of the ethnic minorities. It is these traditions that provide effective coping mechanisms for maintaining the dignity and self-respect of the group.

And it is these mechanisms that can help in healing the scourge of racial discrimination when a small community is broken by big government and big business.