Kathmandu, Sept. 10 -- One of the stories that has been making the rounds since the Covid-19 lockdown that began nearly six months ago is that the suicide rate in Nepal has gone up in that period. But has it?

Most media coverage tries to draw a correlation and causality between the lockdown, mental health and suicides, and use that to prove government inaction and incompetence on the issue.

Statistics about the number of suicidesvary greatly depending on who is doing the counting. Even though the South Asian regiondoes seem to have a relatively high suicide rate, the quality of data is so uneven that it may be too soon to claim that the lockdown has caused an increase.

In June and July, there were a slew of articlesstating that there h...