Guyana’s National Suicide Crisis hotline was abandoned as it was a complete “failure,” said Health Minister Dr Bheri Ramsaran.
“I will say this, the suicide hotline was a failure,” Ramsaran told Stabroek News in an interview. He said the hotline, which was launched in 2010, was receiving only 2.5 calls per week and an estimated 9 calls per month and therefore the ministry started looking at other ways to address the rapidly rising cases of suicide in the country.
According to information gathered, he said, some of the calls were not suicide-related and so, after funding was lost for the project, the ministry decided to do more community works. “We decided to get down to the grassroots level where people must not turn to telephone but to the next person just in the corner to say I have a problem,” he said.
But the crisis hotline, he said, was not completely forgotten and the ministry attempted to merge the AIDS Secretariat hotline with the suicide hotline,
