India, Oct. 1 -- At 12.3 per 100,000, India's suicide rate in 2023 was the second-highest since 1966, when the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started giving such data. The highest suicide rate, of 12.4, was recorded in 2022. That the spike in suicides post the Covid-19 period was yet to abate in 2023 reflects persisting agony, perhaps from the exacerbation of factors contributing to suicide. The insidious nature of economic vulnerability and suffering comes through upon reading some datapoints from the just-released NCRB 2023 report. Family problems and illnesses were the two leading causes behind suicide in India, and that too by a wide margin. Suicides due to indebtedness were just a small fraction compared to suicides due to illnesses, and even smaller in comparison to family problems. Daily wage earners and housewives constituted the two largest occupational groups among suicide cases, even as two-thirds of deaths were of people who had never attended college. In a low-middle-income nation like India, it is hard not to see correlations with dimmer prospects and financial troubles seeping into familial dynamics and treatment costs, fostering distress and despair. As several factors, from conflict between nations to the march of technology, leave their imprint on economies and new sources of distress emerge - mass loss of lives, job loss, forced migration as also its effects on immigrant-receiving societies, resource competition, polarisation - vulnerability will only worsen. Given no geography can hope to remain untouched, the trends in suicides should be a warning for a country like India to invest in reducing vulnerability and improving mental health for millions. Keeping a suicide crisis under check will need the nation to think beyond suicide helplines. These helplines are certainly important, but accessed as they are at a much later stage in the progression of suicidal behaviour, a comprehensive prevention outlook is needed. Interventions are necessary at all levels and in all forms, across age groups. From regular mental-health monitoring in schools/colleges to affordable, de-stigmatised counselling for individuals and families, from targeted mental health support services for occupational groups to awareness campaigns, solutions will have to come together as a weave of societal and governance interventions. All of this will need serious capacity. To start with, India must increase its psychiatrist strength; currently, it is estimated to have less than one psychiatrist per 100,000 population against the WHO recommendation of three. And, of course, the larger policy ecosystem will have a role to play when it comes to reducing the economic vulnerability of people and building more secure populations....