Giving Compass' Take:

• Dr. Leah Utyasheva explains how The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention works in rural African and Asian communities where pesticides are a common method of suicide. 

• How can funders work in communities to reduce suicide? How does suicide vary between cultures? 

• Read about the rising suicide rate in America. 

In some countries in Asia and Africa with many poor agricultural communities, the leading means of suicide is drinking pesticide. Of the 800,000 people who kill themselves globally each year, 20% die from pesticide self-poisoning.

Research suggests most people who try to kill themselves with pesticides reflect on the decision for less than 30 minutes, and that less than 10% of those who don’t die the first time around will try again. Unfortunately, the fatality rate from pesticide ingestion is 40% to 70%.

Fortunately, researchers like Dr. Leah Utyasheva have figured out a very cheap way to massively reduce pesticide suicide rates. In 2016, Leah co-founded the first organization focused on this problem – The Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention.

In Sri Lanka the situation was as such that the suicide rate had increased dramatically after the introduction of highly hazardous pesticides into the agriculture — as the result of the green revolution in 1960s. From 1984 to 2011, there was a lot of pesticides that were banned in Sri Lanka.

So, from 57 instances to a 100,000 population in ’95, it has dropped now to 17. And this is a 70% reduction in suicide rate. So, this is a very significant success, and this is the greatest decrease in suicide rate ever seen.

Read the full article on pesticide suicide rates with Dr. Leah Utyasheva by Robert Wiblin at 80000 Hours.