‘I drank it to put an end to me’: Narrating girls’ suicide and self-harm in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka experienced a spiral of suicides in the 1980s and 1990s, with deaths rising to nearly 48 per 100,000 in 1995. Although reported rates of suicide have declined since then, the incidence of suicide and deliberate self-harm remains high, especially among young people. Data on hospital admissions showed that the number of adolescent girls admitted for deliberate self-harm more than doubled between 2001 and 2007. We conducted in-depth interviews with girls in the south of Sri Lanka who were hospitalised for deliberate self-harm. The interviews revealed several common themes in the girls’ accounts of the circumstances that prompted self-harm episodes, their motives and emotions, and others’ responses. Most episodes involved accusations and disputes regarding the girls’ sexual comportment and heterosexual relations. They often involved harsh scolding and beatings by parents. Themes in the girls’ accounts included anger, disappointment, shame, and acute distress; descriptions of their self-harm as an expressive act directed toward others; and disavowal of responsibility for their actions. We suggest that the rise in girls’ self-harm results from the clash between emergent expectations that young women hold regarding advanced education, heterosexual relations, and out-of-home employment and traditional ideals of appropriate feminine comportment and sexual respectability held by their parents.