Justin Pallickal Jose

Psychosocial Aspects of Farmer Suicide in India: a Social Work Perspective Justin Pallickal Jose

The current understanding about suicide and its related behaviors goes well beyond the conventional mental health models and acknowledges suicide as a complex human behaviour influenced by multi-facet factors ranging from bio-psychosocial to environmental elements. But contemporary discourses on farmer suicide in India are largely focused on agrarian crisis, economic hardships and financial indebtedness faced by farmers in the countryside, while psychosocial and mental health aspects are largely ignored. Though these crisis situations are the predictive of stressful life events that may result into suicide and suicide related behaviours, these are not enough to explain the complex human behaviours associated to suicide. Hence, this work is a response to address this knowledge gap that connects the dominant discourses on agrarian crisis to psychosocial, familial and mental health aspects of farmer suicide in India.