How Healthy He and She: A Gender-Specific Study of Suicide Mortality in BRICS Countries

Abstract

Suicide shows high rates of psychological distress and early warning signs of an increase in mental health disorders. To understand the situation of suicide mortality the present study focuses on gender-based suicide mortality in BRICS countries from 2005 to 2019. The paper tries to assess the extent of suicide mortality in general and gender-specific suicide mortality in particular in all the five countries of BRICS. It explores the reasons for high male suicide mortality in Russia and South Africa. It also looks at the reasons for the recent increase in female suicide mortality in India and decreasing female suicide mortality in the Russian Federation. The paper tries to understand the reasons for reduced male suicide mortality in China. It analyses three areas such as sectoral employment, urban population and self-employment to examine whether suicide mortality has any relation to these factors in these five countries. The paper presents a vision for the generation of better employment opportunities and from narrow biomedical approaches to community-oriented psychosocial perspectives, in setting priorities for interventions and research to solve the problems related to mental health disorder which leads to suicide-based mortality. It will focus on the implementation of WHO guidance, and deployment of digital platforms, to address mental health issues to reduce the incidences of suicidal mortality. The paper examines the SDG's impact from the perspective that it tries to look at SDG's goal 3 in the context of BRICS countries and draws the attention of the policymakers, scholars, and academia toward the serious issue of suicide mortality.