Should I be jailed for attempting Suicide?

For most people, it was a bright new day full of expectations. But for a young lady somewhere in Western Nigeria, it was the complete opposite. Her exam results were recently released, and she couldn’t believe she flopped. Again.

Like a culprit awaiting judgment, she stood in the well-furnished sitting room trembling. She knew for sure that this was going to be a death sentence. She heard her father say, “How in the world did you still fail after I spent so much on you and your academics?” Lots of thoughts clouded her mind at this point. “Am I really a failure?” “Am I a burden to my parents?” “Can I ever become successful like my parents?” “Do I still have a reason to live?” She wondered.

Thoughts of her grandmother’s sedative drugs sitting in the cupboard kept coming to her mind. She felt she needed a quiet exit from the world to escape the troubles of life. She felt it was better if she was no longer there to cause her parents pain.?

When her father had finished speaking with her, he sent her to her room. On her way to her room, she reached into the medicine cabinet and grabbed her grandmother’s sleeping pills. Then she wrote a short note with the words: “I love you, dad. I love you, mum. I’m sorry.” Then she gulped a few sleeping pills and prepared to sleep one last time. She survived, narrowly escaping death.

According to Section 327 of the Criminal Code Act “Any person who attempts to kill himself is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for one year.” [1] Going by the law, the young lady in question is guilty of attempting to take her own life. Psychologically speaking, this does more harm than good because now the child has a criminal record stacked on top of whatever pain and complexity she was going through before.

Will it be right to try her in court and possibly lock her in prison for one year because she attempted suicide? Well, sadly, that’s what the law demands. And yes, people have been locked up in prison for attempting suicide. [2] Whether or not people should commit suicide is a topic for another debate. But making them criminals because they tried to end it all? It’s absurd.

Criminalization is the act of declaring a person a criminal by making their activities or actions illegal under the law. These actions then become punishable as crimes by the law. A suicide attempt is a crime in about 20 countries in the world.[3] A suicide attempt is when someone deliberately harms themselves to end their life but not die. According to the World Health Organization, there are 700,000 suicide cases every year across the globe. For every successfully completed suicide, there are at least 20 unsuccessful attempts. This shows that most people who attempt suicide really don’t want to die. Most of the time, it takes a long period of deliberation within themselves or a final push before they finally get the courage to harm themselves.?

There are lots of reasons why people think of committing suicide. These include academic failure, financial problems, the loss of a job or loved one, etc. Sometimes, a person’s life becomes so complex that they’d rather be dead. And the reason they seek death through suicide is to make the complexity go away. When people feel that others cannot or do not understand what they are going through or how they feel about it, they try to express themselves. Perhaps it’s justifiable to say a suicide attempt may just be another form of expression.

A suicide attempt is just a silent cry by people who desperately need help. Should prison be the next stop for such individuals? Of course not. Rather than criminalizing such an action, we should focus on finding solutions to the problem of the person attempting suicide. Have we thought of the psychological effect of taking such a person to prison and allowing them to face the law??

Imprisonment would make them stay in the same cell with people who have committed different crimes and subject them to similar treatment. It will definitely leave them with regrets of why their first attempt failed and give them more reasons why they don’t deserve to live. They might even attempt suicide again right after they are released.?

Apart from the victim, the victim’s friends, family, and loved ones will also be affected. Now they have to see the victim in prison while still trying to cope with the thoughts of almost losing a loved one. The criminalization of attempted suicide doesn’t have a place to stay in Nigeria. It should definitely go. Why? Because criminalization of suicidal attempts has not helped reduce the rate of suicide cases per year.

There are more effective measures to approach how to handle suicide attempt victims. These are effective measures that can be put in place.

Love, care, and support from loved ones can help restore hope. When people get the attention and care they need, they can recover from whatever crisis they face. And yes, they can find new reasons to live.

Provision of employment: Financial problems are one of the most common causes of depression. The number of unemployed graduates is increasing daily. This will definitely lead to frustration as the person will feel hopeless with no source of income to take care of their basic needs. If more jobs were provided by the government, it would reduce the rate at which people attempt to take their own lives.

Free therapy sessions: The world is full of crises, and people are going through a lot of emotional, mental, and physical stress. Therapy sessions should be made available where people can easily talk to someone they don’t know but who is ready to listen to them and help them. This will help people going through challenges readily open up and solve their problems.

Hospitalization: The hospital should be the first place someone who has attempted suicide should be taken to. Most people who attempt suicide suffer from mental disorders such as depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. This is why they may need counseling and urgent medical attention. Hospitals, not prisons, should be considered.

Review the law and decriminalize suicidal attempts: This will help to remove the stigmatization of being called a criminal after a failed suicide attempt. Decriminalizing it will help people feel confident to open up when battling with suicidal thoughts and seek help.

Nobody wants to end their life. No one deserves to be locked up in jail because they have reached their breaking point and don’t want to live anymore. Everyone deserves love, care, and support from the people around them. If these people have no one to give them these, then, Nigeria as a country should enact laws and mechanisms that protect her citizens and demonstrate love to them, rather than add salt to their injury.

REFERENCES

THE NIGERIAN CRIMINAL CODE ACT 1990: Section 327.?

Stephanie Busari, C., 2021. Locked up for trying to take his own life, in a country where it's a crime to attempt suicide. [online] Cable News Network, Inc., (CNN). Available at: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/30/health/imprisoned-suicide-illegal-nigeria-intl/index.html [Accessed 19 December 2021].

The Guardian. 2021. Suicide still treated as a crime in at least 20 countries, report finds. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/sep/09/suicide-still-treated-as-a-in-at-least-20-countries-report-finds [Accessed 19 December 2021].