In the last three years, the news from the dark chronicle has been increasingly filled with headlines about suicides in BiH. It is no longer possible to categorize who the people who commit suicide are, because they come from all age groups, from minors to the elderly. We investigated how much attention we as a society pay to mental health?
In the past few days, three suicides have been committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, two in Banja Luka, one in Sarajevo. The statistics are quite devastating, from 2020 to 2023, 1,431 people took their own lives. One gets the impression that mental problems are not talked about or written about enough. According to psychologists, we live in a time in which we are exposed to great pressure, and perhaps the younger generation suffers the most. This is shown by the significantly increased number of calls with an overtone of suicide by children and young people.
MAJA KOVAČEVIĆ, psychologist at “Plavi telefon”, Banja Luka
And a traditional society full of prejudices and stereotypes, such as the BiH society has led to the fact that mental health and the prejudices it entails are not talked about, because it is still a taboo topic – not feeling psychologically well. A big problem that we do not care about are people who have suffered from war events. Let’s not even talk about the socio-economic aspect.
VLADIMIR VASIĆ, sociologist
When people are in a hopeless situation, socio-economic circumstances and have that unavoidable factor of psychosomatic factors, and it is very difficult to determine, because we do not have feedback from people who commit suicide, and I think we should talk about it much more often, because we are an underdeveloped community, post-conflict, we have a high trend of destruction and self-destruction and these are some external factors that influence.
What should be constantly emphasized is that there is no shame in seeking help. But it is also important to recognize when someone needs it.
Dr. ALEKSANDAR MILIĆ, psychotherapist
If help does not arrive in time, then it ends fatally, but where help is available, it is a sign that every suicidal person needed help before
The Center for Security Studies constantly says that the problem of suicide needs to be approached systematically, starting with the family, schools, and competent institutions. Given that there are more and more destructive and self-destructive phenomena in society, experts warn that it is time to return to the family framework, where it all begins, BHRT writes.
