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Why do thousands of Indian housewives kill themselves every year?
According to the recently released data by the government's National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 22,372 housewives took their own lives last year - that's an average of 61 suicides every day or one every 25 minutes.
Housewives accounted for 14.6% of the total 153,052 recorded suicides in India in 2020 and more than 50% of the total number of women who killed themselves.
And last year was not an exception. Since 1997 when the NCRB started compiling suicide data based on occupation, more than 20,000 housewives have been killing themselves every year. In 2009, their numbers rose to 25,092.
Reports always blame such suicides on "family problems" or "marriage related issues". But what really does drive thousands of women to take their lives?
Mental health experts says a major reason is rampant domestic violence - 30% of all women told a recent government survey that they had faced spousal violence - and the daily drudgery that can make marriages oppressive and matrimonial homes suffocating.
"Women are really resilient, but there's a limit to tolerance," says Dr Usha Verma Srivastava, a clinical psychologist in the northern city of Varanasi.
"Most girls are married off as soon as they turn 18 - the legal age for marriage. She becomes a wife and a daughter-in-law and spends her entire day at home, cooking and cleaning and doing household chores. All sorts of restrictions are placed on her, she has little personal freedom and rarely has access to any money of her own.
"Her education and dreams no longer matter and her ambition begins to extinguish slowly, and despair and disappointment set in and the mere existence become torture."
In older women, says Dr Verma Srivastava, the reasons for suicide are different.
"Many face the empty nest syndrome after the children have grown up and left home and many suffer from peri-menopausal symptoms which can cause depression and crying spells."
But suicides, she says, are easily preventable and that "if you stop someone for a second, chances are they would stop".
Read more- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-59634393.amp