Mental Health Foundation, Kolkata oraganised an UGC sponsored National Conference on Suicide Prevention: Role of Media in Community Awareness in association with Department of Education, Jadavpur University on 12th September, 2019 as part of the World Suicide Prevention Day, Triguna Sen Auditorium, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. The Suicide Prevention Subsection of Indian Psychiatric Society and West Bengal Academy of Pediatrics, supported the event.
All the major newspapers in Kolkata covered the event, although not all of them were able to get the message across!
The key aims were to increase awareness on suicide prevention measures amongst the youth, to help media professionals become more aware about the safe messaging about suicide release of 2 guidelines on helping the suicidal and standards of reporting on suicide in Bengali.
The key resource person was Professor Sekhar Seshadri, Head, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, NIMHANS, Bangalore, India. We are also indebted to Mr. Mir Afsar Ali, popularly known as Mir, who chose to talk candidly about his journey with Depression.
Mr. Srijit Mukherjee, celebrated film director also shared his thoughts on Depression and Suicide, in light of his movie, Hemlock Society, which delves into the theme of suicide.
