S. Kausalya, wife of slain Dalit youth V. Shankar is reportedly on the mend, a day after she was admitted to hospital after making a suicide bid.
But experts in clinical psychology feel that apparent failure to provide psycho-social support to Kausalya after her husband’s murder to help her with post-traumatic stress disorder, resulted in her deciding to end life.
They fear that unless certain steps are taken to improve social support to her at the earliest, she might continue facing mental trauma.
“We need to help the people who happened to be in such situations very delicately and extend psychological support to them in a scientific manner. It is also a common myth that the people who have tried suicide and failed in the attempt, will not make another bid,” said K. Gireesh, national president of Indian Association of Clinical Psychologists.
A hallucination that Shankar was calling out to her to join him was the reason Kausalya attributed for the suicide attempt, according to her brother-in-law Vigneswaran.
This is the result of ‘pathological grief reaction’ which she underwent after Shankar’s murder.
“In normal deaths, ‘grief reactions’ usually subside because rituals are attended by relatives from both sides which by itself act as psychotherapy for the persons who lost the loved ones.
“But in this case, where Kausalya was ostracised by a section of society, grief will not die down naturally,” said Dr. Gireesh.
