(If you feel suicidal or know someone in distress, please reach out to them with kindness and call these numbers of local emergency services, helplines, and mental health NGOs.)

3,548 people died by suicide due to unemployment in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union government told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, 9 February.

Citing the National Crime Records Bureau's (NCRB) data, Nityanand Rai, Minister of State (Home), said in a written reply that a total of 25,000 Indians died by suicide due to either unemployment or bankruptcy between 2018 and 2020.

According to Rai's written reply in the Rajya Sabha,

• Between 2018 and 2020, 9,140 people died by suicide due to unemployment, and 16,091 people due to bankruptcy.

• 2,741 people died by suicide due to unemployment in 2018, followed by 2,851 people in 2019, and 3,548 in 2020.

• 4,970 people died in 2018 due to bankrupcy or indebtness.

• In 2019 this number went shot up to 5,908. In 2020, however, 5,213 people died due to bankrupcy or indebtness.

"Suicides in our country often don't have diagnosis of mental illness...very often it has to do with very severe socio-economic reason and has nothing to do with the fact that you have a mental illness or not," Dr Soumitra Pathare, consultant psychiatrist and Director of Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy at ILS, told FIT back in May 2020.

"In the last days (around the fifth week of lockdown) we are begining to see that the reasons are related to a lack of food, or a lack of money or a lack of employment, and worries about the future," he added.

Where does the solution lie?

Speaking to FIT for another article, Dr Soumitra Pathare talked about looking at economic interventions and policies as not just measures for economic upliftment, but also mental health interventions.

"suicide rates among those who got the cash transfer was 60 percent lower than the others," he explained breaking down studies that have looked at data from cash transfer programmes implemented in lower and middle income countries similar to India.

In his address in the Rajya Sabha, Rai added that the government was focussing on mental health and creating employment opportunities to address the issue.

He spoke of sevelar employment schemes and policies launched by the government like the Aatmanirbhar Bharat Rojgar Yojana (ABRY), and The National Career Service (NCS) among others.

'To address the burden of mental disorders, the government is implementing the National Mental Health Programme (NMHP) and is supporting the implementation of the District Mental Health Programme (DMHP) under NMHP in 692 districts of the country," he said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman, along with the Union Budget 2022 also announced a National TeleMental Health Programme, as the pandemic "accentuated mental health problems."