Improving mental health is key to ending suicide cases

September is suicide prevention month.[Courtesy]

September is suicide prevention month. 

According to the World Health Organisation, one person dies by suicide every 40 seconds. In Kenya, the Health ministry indicates that about four people die by suicide every day. In the Mt Kenya region alone, 680 people were reported to have died by suicide between June last year and April this year, highlighting the seriousness of this problem.

Suicide is usually linked to poor mental health. As such, high suicide rates as being witnessed currently tells a story about the state of Kenyans mental health.

Unfortunately, for decades people who attempted suicide in Kenya ended being sent to jail. That, however, came to an end in January 2025 when the High Court declared unconstitutional sections of the law that created the crime called ‘attempted suicide’.

Riding on the reality that people who attempt to take their lives need help and not jail, the ruling was a bold step because it took away some of the stigma associated with mental health conditions that are silently but steadily wiping out an unacceptable number of promising lives.

That said, one would have expected that, after decriminalising suicide, the government would have taken the next bold step of putting in place systems that alleviate suicide. By July 2026, Parliament was still debating whether to amend the laws criminalising suicide-a year after the courts ruled them unconstitutional.

In 2020, a presidential task force on mental health handed in its report, advising that mental illness-the key driver of suicide-be declared a national emergency of epidemic proportions. This would have put suicide on the national agenda and unlocked more resources to address the growing mental health crisis.

The report proposed a wide range of actions, including hiring more mental health workers to help society cope with mental health conditions that drive its members to commit suicide. Some of the proposals were as simple as setting up more recreation facilities at the county level where people can release the stress and anxieties that accumulate from daily life.

Sadly, the report's life-saving prescriptions appear to have been quietly shelved or ignored altogether by policymakers at both county and national government levels who do not seem to realise that unless a bold attempt is made to address a nation’s mental well-being, any attempt to improve their physical well-being is bound to collapse.

As Kenya marks the World Suicide Prevention Month, mental health should form part of the discussions from the top, and bold decisions must be made to improve the mental health of citizens to make ours a country where people look forward to living, not dying.

This must include addressing key aspects that make life difficult for Kenyans, such as the cost of living, joblessness, and social conflict, as well as the staple diet of high-octane politics that keeps an entire country living on the edge of its mental health.