UNIVERSITIES and schools affected by the series of recent suicides of their students have remained mum about the tragic incidents.
A respected psychiatrist and former official of the Psychiatric Association of the Philippines informed this columnist that at least four suicides have occurred at De La Salle, Ateneo, and Mapua in Metro Manila, and at another private university in Iloilo City.
The Mapua victim was a 21-year-old female taking up engineering, who leapt to her death from her condo unit. She was under psychiatric treatment for a year and then decided to live alone.
University officials have withheld details of the tragic event from the media, and understandably so, other information have remained unavailable from the grieving families.
The hearing last week by the Senate committee on health chaired by Sen. Bong Go disclosed alarming facts and figures on rising incidents of mental distresses, including suicides. The dire situation has been worsened by the neglectful and mismanaged public psychiatric system.
The committee also took up a resolution filed by Sen. Raffy Tulfo on the rampant corruption at the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH). Tulfo “warned erring NCMH officials that they would be held accountable for reportedly squandering” the P1.86 billion budget this year for psychiatric medication and treatment, along with other medical needs.
Go said that based on the figures from the DOH and NCMH, there were “2,147 attempted suicides reported in public schools and 404 students took their lives during the school year 2021-2022. In 2019, the NCMH received 712 suicide-related calls and 2,413 mental health-related calls, and recorded 2,810 actual suicides.”
‘Any prepared efforts and contingencies for suicide prevention and depression or mental issues management had been hugely stifled by corruption.’
No one among the NCMH officials at the hearing could explain any strong mechanism that could have prevented the mounting cases of suicide. Any prepared efforts and contingencies for suicide prevention and depression or mental issues management had been hugely stifled by corruption.
At one point, Tulfo barked, “The National Center for Mental Health is not the mother of all irregularities. It is the dinosaur of all corruption because corruption inside it has been happening for ages.”
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The city government of Antipolo should seriously crack down on a powerful land-grabbing syndicate reportedly headed by the close relative of a congressman.
There has been persistent talk at the Ridge or the “overlooking” hillside at Antipolo on how a popular upscale coffeeshop has been stopped from opening. It was set to start operating early last year but was suddenly bogged down by an alleged illegal claimant to the lot where the coffeeshop today stands.
The same syndicate reportedly also took over a lot owned by a doctor and a businessman couple in a subdivision at Antipolo, but lost in a court case filed by the legal owners that went all the way up to the Supreme Court.
It has been almost two years since the High Court’s decision but the offices and equipment of the well-connected syndicate have remained in the once-disputed lot.
This, of course, has rendered several city hall officials and the police suspect in the operations of the land-grabbers.
