How to save a life

On the morning of 10th August 2026, a girl in a village received her SSC results by texting a number, while her school pinned the entire result sheet on the notice board. It is a miracle of state logistics, that a student in a crowd at the school gate and another surrounded by their family at home were delivered the same verdict at the same time. Ten of them took their own lives by next week, reports Aachol Foundation.

The real number is more than ten times higher than what Aachol Foundation records, and an untold story out there will come to an end by the time you finish reading this article. No one likes to talk about suicides in Bangladesh, and when we do, we’re too busy having the wrong conversations. The right conversation is one where they are allowed to write better stories, so let us follow the one they’re already living in.

10:00 - The message arrives before her screen dims.

It shows a grade and…nothing. Nothing about what the grade is and is not. No words of reassurance. No plans for the future. This is the act of abandonment we rehearsed too many times and called it a “result”. They will say she died for her marks, not the depression she doesn’t know to describe, not the friendship or romance she had to let go of, and not the silence her father will subject her to. All of which are far stronger precipitants to suicide; the result is simply the final straw.

12:00 - The school has her family’s number, but they are not required to check in on her. What her teachers think are words of motivation come out pressure and humiliation anyway. They do not know to spot who is struggling, and are not trained in what to say even if they do. Six child psychiatrists serve 170 million. Mental health receives a laughably low 0.44% of the health budget, with a treatment gap of 90%. The classroom has the widest door this country offers to its children, and isn’t staffed by anyone they can open up to.

14:00 - The first deaths are in the papers, and they’re not helping.

Checking Bangladeshi reports against WHO and IASP guidelines reveal violations that are too consistent to be accidental. The method is mentioned right there in the headlines, the names are written in full, and private messages published before the investigation concludes.

Mental health is never mentioned, and hotline numbers are never included.

The worst blunder is the attribution of suicide to a singular cause. Claiming that someone took their own life because they failed an exam is like saying that an argument with your spouse is why your your marriage ended in a divorce. Suicide does not have a “cause”, but several layers of “precipitants”, much like a heart attack. The examiner does not murder a student by failing them, and a student does die by suicide because they failed. Reporting ten deaths across ten districts like that acts much more like a script than like news. The dead do not read the coverage. The ones who are still weighing their options do.

15:00 - The pioneer hotline of this country begins their watch at three in the afternoon, with volunteers trained in the “befriender” model working twelve full hours. A younger crisis intervention hotline joins in at six, offering both calls and texts, manned by psychology students and supervised by professionals. Together, these two numbers cover fifteen hours of the day. Most other names work work as little more than posters on a wall, and the country still lacks a proper 24-hour suicide hotline.

21:00 - Most parents are not monsters, but the uncomfortable truth is that they still end up doing the most damage at the dinner table. They were raised in a world that looked quite different than ours, and grew up without much parenting themselves. Without instructions or guidance, they inevitably default to what was done to them - comparison, humiliation, and silence - precisely when their child needed the opposite. The love of a parent is the only kind that should ever be unconditional, but most of them never got that memo.

23:00- Adolescents frequently visit forums about mental health and relationships.

Without strict moderation, they often end up substituting one for another. The belief that you can rescue someone from suicide by loving them enough can only create dependance and delay proper treatment. It is a manifestation of “saviour complex”, and is driven more by the rescuer’s anxiety than what someone really needs in a crisis. The role of a partner is to provide emotional support, not to act as a proxy hotline. And when suicide becomes a tool for control - “If you leave me I will kill myself” - the dynamic completely collapses and now classifies as emotional abuse.

03:00- Then the country goes quiet.

Only one hotline is active, and if something goes wrong now, the nearest door is a pharmacy or even a hospital, where Section 309 still makes the attempt a crime. Britain got rid of its version in 1961, India in 2017. The girl who survives in Bangladesh may wake up to an investigating officer, so families call it an “accident”.

This is why we don’t even know how many we lose. WHO says 4,700 a year, while the police reports average at 15,000 per year, which is almost twice the amount we lost to Covid-19 in the years of the pandemic.

The city of Kota is the coaching capital of India. It earned the nickname “suicide factory” by running this exact script everyday for a decade before losing twenty-nine students in 2023. The city now has a police unit just for students because they ran out of ideas, and hostel rooms are checked when a student starts to skip meals. Toppers and rankings are no longer glorified, and counselling is mandatory.

It took a scandalous body count before Rajasthan learned, and we are getting there. The number of suicides I am willing to accept is zero, but I cannot do it alone. So let us run this day again, as a better story.

A better story for result day

10:00 The Board Chairman signs the same eleven papers, but adds a single line after the grade.

“You are worth more than this number. If you feel unsafe, you will not be alone.”

Just one line in Bangla in every SMS, every marksheet, and every notice board. Followed by a number to call or text that will actually answer. We can push 1.85 million messages at ten o’clock, we can send one more at ten-of-one. Next, we take a lesson out of Kota, and stop glorifying toppers, and put counselling checkpoints in coaching centers at 45, 90, and at 120 days.

12:00 The Headmaster puts a spreadsheet to good use.

He uses the spreadsheet. Within twenty-four hours, every student who failed, or fell off a cliff, or has a classmate worried about them, gets a call from someone who knows their name, and a home visit within seventy-two if the phone stays silent. Every teacher gets a two-page card — what to ask, what never to say, which signs mean today, not Monday , whom to ring — and it becomes a licensing condition. That is the referral pipeline this country never built, for the price of a laminate.

14:00 The Editor takes out the WHO guidelines from the bottom of her drawer.

It’s been collecting dust for long enough, and today she uses them. No method, no name, no screenshots, no photograph. No single-line cause. A helpline at the bottom of every story, and the reminder that suicide is preventable. A Press Council code with fines and an audit. It’s the cheapest prevention there is, and it goes a long way.

15:00 The Director General of Health Services can do better than volunteers.

He can sanction a statutory, salaried, supervised service that runs 24/7. Call and text, free, anonymous, staffed, and paid for.

21:00 The Father sits through the difficult silence before the results, and not after.

And maybe gets a few tips from us that no one bothered to tell him. Don’t compare with how things were a generation ago. Don’t compare with the cousin. Don’t ask what people will say.

If you suspect something, ask. Ask them, if they are thinking of hurting themselves. Do not leave a child distressed at night. Do not allow them to feel like they’re any less of a son or a daughter, because of a number on a piece of paper.

23:00 Me.

But also you, and your partner, and your best friend, and whoever you feel safe talking to. If you aren’t feeling okay, call them. And then the two of you can call our lines together. This is what support looks like, even in the middle of an argument. Even a threat is not the price of staying; it’s triage. And it isn’t meant to be outsourced to another teenager.

03:00 The Lawmaker finally takes out Section 309 after sixty-five years of it doing nothing.

A survivor is handed over to the doctor, not the officer. Sedatives and pesticides are restricted at the point of sale, because means restriction is still brutally effective in cutting down the numbers. A national suicide registry is started, and published quarterly so Aachol Foundation doesn’t have to scrape headlines before their reports.

She finally gets some sleep, with the number still written on the fridge.

The right conversation

Same girl, same grade, and seven more people with seven simple responsibilities. None of them need new technology or serious expenses, just a country that finally takes suicide seriously. Kota had police officers checking on students because they ran out of time. We did not. Time is the only advantage we have so far over them, and we are running out.

SAVE THIS NUMBER. BEFORE THE BAD NIGHT.

Vent by Mindspace — 09678-678-778 · free, anonymous, call or text, Bangla & English, every day 6 PM – 6 AM Kaan Pete Roi — 09612-119911 · every day 3 PM – 3 AM Child Helpline — 1098 · Emergency — 999 

Dr Murtaza Zakiul Abrar is a Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, and subject matter expert in Conflict & Crisis intervention, with no financial interest in any of the services named above.