ABSTRACT
Survivors of suicide attempts, and family members, are often likely to be looked upon with suspicion and the associated stigma and the tainting of the family can have serious consequences on the individual’s and family’s standing in the community. The partition of India in 1947, when the British, left resulted in mass migration on an enormous scale, with Muslims leaving India and Hindus leaving Pakistan. The migratory patterns were forced and the result of religious differences. Marecek set out to investigate the local meanings of suicide as in Sri Lanka the act is not conceptualised as mental illness or deep-seated psychological disorder. The risk of repeating self-harm and subsequent outcome play an important role in managing patients who present with deliberate self-harm. The likelihood of succeeding inadvertently may well increase with repetition because the individual may learn the level of toxicity and also how many tablets or how much insecticide to drink.
