Page 39 - NAMAH-Apr-2018

Notes on counselling

Aftermath of suicide — a consciousness perspective

Dr. Soumitra Basu

Abstract
Suicidal behaviour does not end with the demise of the subject but has social and cosmic ramifications.
The aftermath of suicide where others can get unknowingly affected also deserves attention. The occult
implications necessitate a consciousness-based counselling approach.

Academicians are justifiably working hard to injunctions against suicide that are elaborated
find all possible ways to prevent suicide, the in scriptures of all traditions. A misdeed like
rate of which seems to have soared since the suicide does not end with the individual’s
turn of the millennium, with the USA alone unfortunate demise but has social and
registering a 30-year high in 2016. Suicide arises cosmic effects that trigger off multiple reactions
in a complex and multifaceted background and at different points in space and time. It was
no one single criterion carries the statistical only in the late 1980s that psychiatry started
power of being self-relevant. Though the majority acknowledging how devastating the aftermath
of subjects committing suicide satisfy the of suicide was for relatives. It was recommended
criteria of one or more psychiatric disorders, that bereavement postvention programmes
there is also an increasing acknowledgement should be part of a comprehensive package
that instead of viewing suicidal behaviour as that included prevention and intervention
symptomatic of psychiatric diseases, suicidal components affiliated with existing mental
tendency per se could constitute a distinctly health services(2).
unique dimension by itself which could co-exist
with psychiatric disorders in a single individual Aftermath of suicide
(1). However, there is another aspect of suicide
that also needs an equally engrossing attention In fact a consciousness perspective from an
–- the after-effects of suicide that affects not only integral psychological standpoint reveals the
the vulnerable but also unsuspecting subjects. various ramifications of suicide:

As a practising psychiatrist, I have again a. There is often a familial relationship in
and again felt how significant are the moral the transmission of suicidal behaviour

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