From a broken wife to a determined CEO: How Malavika Hegde stopped CCD from dying

Remember the shocking reports in 2019 about the suicide of V G Siddhartha, founder of India’s largest chain of coffee shops, Cafe Coffee Day. In December 2020, Malavika Hedge, Siddhartha’s wife, was appointed as the CEO of Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd (CDEL), the owner of the Café Coffee Day chain. The odds were against her. Yet, she has managed to script a wonderful success story. 

V G Siddhartha’s shocking suicide- the beginning of CDEL’s troubles 

V G Siddhartha’s suicide had also brought into focus the problems faced by CDEL. 

The CDEL founder had asked his driver to take him to a bridge close to Mangaluru. As per the driver, Siddhartha went out for a walk. He wasn’t seen thereafter, and his body was recovered later. 

A typewritten note was released by ANI. In the note, Siddhartha seemed to  be apologising for  “failing to create the right profitable business model.” He said that pressure from private equity partners and other lenders, and harassment from the income tax department had become unbearable. 

This meant that CDEL, the owner of India’s biggest coffee retail chain, was in trouble. This was a matter of shock for people across the country. 

After all, Café Coffee Day isn’t just a retail coffee chain, but also a part of the popular urban culture.  CCD owns 572 cafes across 165 cities in the country, along with 333 CCD Value Express kiosks. It is a huge business with a total of 36,326 vending machines serving coffee to CCD customers. 

Malavika Hegde takes over 

Malavika Hegde, the wife of V G Siddhartha, took over as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CDEL in December 2020. 

This was quite a courageous move on the part of Hegde. CDEL had a debt of Rs 7,000 crore as of March 31, 2019. There was clearly a mountain of debt for Hegde to take care of. But Hegde, a heartbroken woman, decided to stand up to her problems instead of running away and fleeing abroad. 

As CDEL CEO, Malavika Hegde had a number of challenges in her way. She had to reduce the company’s debt burden in order to keep her husband’s vision intact. She also needed to keep the company afloat as the livelihood of thousands of employees was at stake. 

Malavika Hegde sets up CDEL for a miraculous recovery  

Hegde hasn’t only proved to be courageous but has also managed to showcase her skills and talent as a CEO. 

In August last year, CDEL said that it had reduced debt “significantly” and that the management was trying to put the company back on track. 

According to its annual report, the net debt of CDEL stood at Rs 1,731 crore as of March 31, 2021. It said, “The total loan funds stood at Rs 1,779 crore which comprises of long-term borrowings of Rs 1,263 crore and short-term borrowings of Rs 516 crore.” 

This was a considerable improvement in CDEL’s financial health. The company’s debt had stood at Rs 2,909.95 crore in FY 2020. CDEL would still want to improve further. But it has already managed to slash its debt burden significantly and is set to get back on track pretty soon. 

(Source: TFI Post)

Meghan accuses UK royals of racism, says 'didn't want to be alive'

Meghan, the wife of Prince Harry, accused Britain’s royal family of raising concerns about how dark their son’s skin might be and pushing her to the brink of suicide, in a tell-all television interview that will send shockwaves through the monarchy.

The 39-year-old, whose mother is Black and father is white, said she had been naive before she married into royalty in 2018, but that she ended up having suicidal thoughts and considering self harm after pleading for help but getting none.

Meghan said her son Archie, now aged one, had been denied the title of prince because there were concerns within the royal family “about how dark his skin might be when he’s born”.

“That was relayed to me from Harry, those were conversations that family had with him,” Meghan recounted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey aired on CBS late on Sunday.

Photo: Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese/Handout via Reuters

Meghan declined to say who had aired such concerns, as did Harry. Winfrey later told CBS that Harry had said it was not Queen Elizabeth or her husband Philip.

Harry said his family had cut them off financially and his father Prince Charles, heir to the British throne, had let him down and refused to take his calls at one point.

Buckingham Palace was not expected to give an immediate response to the interview, which aired in the early hours of Monday morning in Britain.

The two-hour broadcast was the most anticipated royal interview since Harry’s late mother Princess Diana shared intimate details of her failed marriage to Charles in 1995, denting the heir’s reputation and the family’s standing in the eyes of the British public.

Nearly three years since her star-studded wedding in Windsor Castle, Meghan described some unidentified members of the royal household as brutal, mendacious and guilty of racist remarks.

She also accused Kate, wife of her husband’s elder brother Prince William, of making her cry before her wedding.

While the family came in for open criticism, neither Harry nor Meghan attacked the 94-year-old queen directly.

Still, Meghan said she had been silenced by “the Firm” - which Elizabeth heads - and that her pleas for help while in distress at racist reporting and her predicament had fallen on deaf ears.

“I just didn’t want to be alive any more. And that was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought. And I remember how he (Harry) just cradled me,” Meghan said, wiping away tears.

‘REALLY LET DOWN’

Harry and Meghan’s announcement in January 2020 that they intended to step down from their royal roles plunged the family into crisis. Last month, Buckingham Palace confirmed the split would be permanent, as the couple looks to forge an independent life in the United States.

Harry, 36, said they had stepped back from royal duties because of a lack of understanding, and he was worried about history repeating itself - a reference to the death of his mother Diana who was killed in a 1997 crash as her car sped away from chasing photographers.

Asked what his mother would say about events, he answered: “I think she would feel very angry with how this has panned out and very sad.” He felt “really let down” by his father.

Harry denied blindsiding Queen Elizabeth, his grandmother, with his decision to shun life within the monarchy, but said Prince Charles stopped taking his calls at one point.

“I had three conversations with my grandmother, and two conversations with my father before he stopped taking my calls. And then he said, can you put this all in writing?”

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, gives an interview to Oprah Winfrey in this undated handout photo. Photo: Harpo Productions/Joe Pugliese/Handout via Reuters

Detractors say the couple, whose official title is the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, wanted the limelight, but were not willing to live with the attention and scrutiny it brought.

To supporters, their treatment shows how an outdated British institution lashed out against a modern, independent biracial woman.

“I know first-hand the sexism and racism institutions and the media use to vilify women and people of color to minimize us, to break us down and to demonize us,” Serena Williams, one of the world’s most successful tennis players and friend of Meghan’s, said on Twitter.

Amanda Gorman, the poet who wowed viewers at the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden, said on Twitter Meghan had been the “Crown’s greatest opportunity for change, regeneration, and reconciliation in a new era. They didn’t just maltreat her light - they missed out on it.”

LIES AND TEARS

There have also been allegations of bullying against Meghan which appeared in The Times newspaper in the buildup to the couple’s appearance. Buckingham Palace said it would investigate the claims, adding it was “very concerned”.

Meghan told Winfrey people within the royal institution not only failed to protect her against malicious claims but lied to protect others.

“It was only once we were married and everything started to really worsen that I came to understand that not only was I not being protected but that they were willing to lie to protect other members of the family,” Meghan said.

Meghan denied a newspaper story that she had made Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, cry before the wedding and said it was a turning point in her relations with the media and the palace.

“The reverse happened,” Meghan said. “A few days before the wedding she (Kate) was upset about something, pertaining to yes the issue was correct about the flower girl dresses, and it made me cry. And it really hurt my feelings.”

Meghan, who said they were not paid for the interview, conceded she had not realised what she was marrying into when she joined the British monarchy and “went into it naively”.

The couple also revealed that Meghan, who is pregnant with their second child, was expecting a girl.

Harry said Meghan had “saved” him from his trapped royal life. “I would disagree, I think he saved all of us. You made a decision that certainly saved my life,” Meghan said.

“This is in some ways just the beginning for us.”

(Source: Reuters)

Rising suicide figures in Japan reflect many women’s despair in a pandemic

 Some people’s lives are like horror movies. It’s strange that, in an age that can create virtual reality, self-driving cars and intelligent machines, the world’s third-largest economy can’t solve the problem of human misery. Maybe it’s insoluble.

More and more Japanese women seem to feel it is. Female suicide is sharply rising. July was a watershed. National Police Agency statistics tell the tale, as far as numbers can tell it — 651 women are known to have taken their own lives that month, up from 400-500 a month typically. The increase continued into August and September. Male suicide figures are higher but not rising. What is evoking this new despair in women?

COVID-19, one immediately thinks, and undeniably the economic brunt of the pandemic falls more heavily on women. Their jobs, often part time and ill-paid, are most vulnerable when the economy flounders. Single motherhood is hard at the best of times. These are not the best of times.

The economic surface conceals — or reflects — ominous depths. Among 485 female suicides in August whose cause is known, the National Police Agency finds only 29 directly linked to poverty — as against 380 rooted in depression and other health issues, and 84 in domestic disputes.

Among 485 cases of female suicide in August whose cause is known, the National Police Agency has found that 380 were rooted in depression and other health issues, 84 in domestic issues and 29 directly linked to poverty. | GETTY IMAGES

The monthly magazine Bungei Shunju, in its December issue, profiles cases: survivors who faced death very close up, only to turn back, or be turned back — by one pill too few, one vacillation too many, one hope left intact.

So it was with “Eiko Tashita” (all names in quotation marks are pseudonyms). Her parents found her unconscious one day in May, and called an ambulance. She’s 30. Divorced from an abusive husband, she and her elementary school son sought refuge with her parents. It was an uneasy arrangement. She was emotionally battered. Her elderly parents could cope with only so much.

Her husband’s abusive behavior had turned physical as the coronavirus pinch tightened. He worked for a major company, but his investments went sour and so did he. She’d had a part-time job in a fūzoku establishment offering erotic entertainment — another sector hit hard by the pandemic. Single and unemployed, a tolerated but less than welcome presence in her parents’ house. “All I could think was, ‘I want to die,’” she says.

Worse was to come. Household tensions multiplied. Her son was growing wayward. Scolded by his grandfather, he became violent. There was no controlling him. “Out!” cried the grandfather at last. Eiko swallowed tranquilizers and sleeping pills. She survived, but mere survival is no solution.

The sex industry, single motherhood and economic anxiety, not to say terror, are common themes in Bungei Shunju’s coverage. “Hana Koga,” 35, worked in a sex trade sector known as deriheru (“delivery health”). “Health” in this case means “sex,” and “delivery” means you go to the client instead of the client coming to you.

She married young. Her husband was unemployed. She became the breadwinner. Her in-laws disapproved and blamed her. She gave birth to a daughter. Her husband disappeared. A father can do that. A mother can’t. Debts mounted. COVID-19 hit. Her earnings shrank. She too attempted suicide.

Why didn’t she apply for welfare? She mentioned it to her parents. They objected. The family would be shamed, they said. It seems an odd moral squeamishness that shrinks from applying for social assistance but not from the sex industry. But she never told her parents what she does for a living. What they don’t know won’t hurt them — “but I think they suspect,” she says.

How long can she go on like this? Alcohol helps — not by answering the question but by dulling its force. She drinks all night and is sick all morning. She has a boyfriend who works in a restaurant and is lately back on the job — though at reduced hours — after a temporary layoff. She is lucid enough to diagnose her situation: “There’s no future.” The coronavirus crisis will end sooner or later, but what will its ending solve for her? Little, she fears.

“No future,” in two words, may explain better than any single direct cause the female suicide surge, psychiatrist Toshiko Kamo tells Bungei Shunju. A global pandemic, she says, breeds fears beyond those of a local natural disaster. From a stricken locality you can escape, at least in theory, at least in thought. Failing that, you can hope for help from outside — supplies, volunteers and so on. COVID-19, by contrast, is not only deadly, it’s everywhere. What escape is there? Home, maybe — but a home locked in against the outside world becomes a kind of prison, seeding and intensifying domestic tensions that, says Kamo, weigh on women in particular as traditional homemakers and caregivers. In Japan, that tradition remains very much alive.

Many women involved in the sex industry have an alternate window on the world. They see things others don’t see. They fuse many roles into one. They are entertainers, sex objects, objects of love, mothers, older sisters, even quasi-psychiatrists. That’s true always; more so in times of crisis. “Since this year began, I’ve heard of 15 fūzoku women in this neighborhood committing suicide,” Bungei Shunju hears from “Momoka Matsumoto,” a 29-year-old delivery health worker in Sendai.

She speaks of heightened anxiety. Sadomasochist sex play lately “feels like it could go all the way” — beyond play to violence, even murder. Tweeted warnings abound on Twitter: “Don’t do that sort of stuff.”

“Clients who can’t vent their stress at home bring it to us,” she says. Some seek comfort, and get it. Some seek comfort and don’t get it. Some seek outlets for bottled-up rage. The paid companion walks a fine line. She must be subtle. She can’t let her guard down.

Matsumoto has been there before. She debuted in Sendai in March 2011. The Great East Japan Earthquake was still rumbling. Business was good. Construction workers and volunteers poured in, eager to help but traumatized by the death and destruction.

“More than sex,” she says, “they wanted comfort.”

She learned much then that stands her in good stead now. She consoles men whose home life is strained, whose wives are irritable, whose kids are stressed with anxieties they can’t express or understand. Nobody knows what lies ahead. Almost as anguishing as having no future is having an unknown one. We’re all in this together.

(Source: JT)

Julian Assange is “hearing voices” and at “high risk of suicide,” psychiatrist says

 At a hearing for Julian Assange, a psychiatrist testified that the Wikileaks founder is experiencing strong hallucinations and is at a high risk of suicide.

At a recent extradition hearing for Julian Assange, a psychiatrist testified that the embattled Wikileaks founder is experiencing strong hallucinations and is at a high risk of suicide. Professor Michael Kopelman, an emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at King’s College London, said that Assange has been hearing voices and has confessed to a priest that he was making preparations to kill himself. These preparations included drafting his will and writing a goodbye letter to his family and friends.

On Tuesday, at the Old Bailey courthouse in London, Professor Kopelman testified that he visited Assange over 20 times and has become concerned about his mental and physical health.

“He reported auditory hallucinations, which were voices either inside or outside his head, somatic hallucinations, funny bodily experiences, these have now disappeared. He also has a long history of musical hallucinations, which is maybe a separate phenomenon, that got worse when he was in prison,” Kopelman said.

The voices that Assange is hearing are saying things like “you are dust, you are dead, we are coming to get you”.

Kopelman said that the most severe hallucinations have begun to diminish, but Assange is still severely depressed and at a high risk of suicide. He also added that if Assange were extradited the risk would increase further.

“The risk of suicide arises out of clinical factors…but it is the imminence of extradition and or an actual extradition that would trigger the attempt, in my opinion,” Kopleman said.

Kopelman was cross-examined by James Lewis QC, who accused Assange of fabricating his mental illness to avoid extradition.

Kopelman disagreed with the assertion, and pointed out that Assange was reluctant to share details about his mental struggles with authorities, despite self-reporting in the past.

“Mr Assange was very reluctant to talk about his suicidal ideas and plans because he feared he would be put on constant watch or isolation,” Kopelman said.

“He thinks as a leader he shouldn’t be showing weakness or psychiatric problems and he was concerned he would end up being further isolated on continuous watch and he didn’t want that,” he added.

Prison guards have previously confiscated a razor blade and two cords from his cell, and he has been kept under close watch the entire time he has been behind bars. Last month, his partner Stella Moris visited him for the first time since the coronavirus lockdowns began at the prison.

Moris said that Assange is looking much thinner than he was the last time she saw him back in March. She says that the situation has been “incredibly stressful” and that he has been having some health problems, including a sprained ankle and a frozen shoulder. While the prison was taking virus precautions when Assange was having visitors, Moris says that they have done nothing to protect the prisoners during regular hours. Moris has also launched a crowdfunding campaign to help with legal costs for Assange as he fights extradition to the United States.

So far, the campaign has raised £138,445.

Assange is facing 18 charges under the U.S. Espionage Act from the 2010 release of 500,000 files that exposed US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

(Source: The Mind Unleashed)

Solace

In April, I was suicidal for the first time in over a decade. Even before lockdown, my mental health had been poor. The dreams I was having in April—back when I was actually sleeping—were anxiety-based and vivid. One recurring dream I had, both before and during the pandemic: I was walking in a grocery store where everyone but me was white. They would put their hands on my wrist or back or hair as I walked by. If I said anything in my dream, if I reacted, someone would say, “You’re taking this too seriously.” Wide awake at three in the morning, I didn’t wake my husband. I needed to make a decision for me, not for him—I called a hotline.

After the call, I made two lists. One was the things I had to do to stay alive. The other was a list of things to accomplish in my hopefully long life. Even writing this now, I still feel the eviscerating embarrassment I felt while scrawling out ambitions and ideas and small beloved things: walk down the street again eating a lemon ice cream; write another book; visit my friend in Sweden.

When solace is dramatized, it tends to be portrayed as therapy visits, ones where you cry yourself empty, meals spent with friends or family, or the character in the short story who, in the last few paragraphs, looks at something beautiful in nature and, somehow, that peony dripped with rain opens a locked door inside him. My solace is a K-drama on Netflix: Crash Landing on You.

The premise is this: an obscenely wealthy young businesswoman has a paragliding accent and ends up in the demilitarized zone. This woman, Yoon Se-ri, runs into members of a North Korean military unit, including her future love interest, Captain Ri Jeong-hyeok. Making a poor choice, Se-ri disregards the directions Ri Jeong-hyeok gives her and goes the wrong way. She runs through a field laden with land mines, finds a conveniently fallen tree that has smashed into the electric fence, and parkours over it into North Korea.

We live in a world where anything feels possible. Why should I ask television to behave rationally?

STILL FROM CRASH LANDING ON YOU

In the episodes that follow, Se-ri learns how to live a much different life than the one she has in South Korea. She learns North Korean customs, befriends North Korean people, and from the experiences—friendship, trauma, fear, curiosity, love—changes as a person. She doesn’t become a perfect person from this exposure to people culturally and economically different than her; there’s a later scene, back in Seoul, where she buys apartment buildings and promises her tenants two years free rent if they go fight her enemies in a warehouse for her.

I laughed at the absurdity of that situation typing it out. Yet, every time I’ve watched that scene, I’ve thought about how if one of my landlords had handed me a baseball bat and asked me to fight someone for two years free rent, I would’ve at least sat down and made a pros and cons list.

So, yes, there are flaws. There are probably other problematic moments for people who have deep cultural understandings of either nation. Even still, while watching Crash Landing on You, something became deeply apparent to me. That despite my deep distrust of the U.S. government, despite my complicated relationship with capitalism, I had never thought deeply about North Koreans as people. I had never taken a moment to parse the American rhetoric about that nation, learn more about their culture, or consider how easily I had swallowed the ideas that bricked up my empathetic imagination.

In mainstream U.S. television, who gets to be a person? What is culturally upheld in television shows? How often do we get to see people from other countries not as terrorists, not as victims who desperately need us, not as people to use as punch lines, but as people? Let me take it a step further. How often does our culture let us see our own indigenous, Latinx, and Black people as people? Especially without the cloak of a “respectable” job like police officer?

In Crash Landing on You, Ri Jeong-hyeok is a classic romantic hero. He is handsome, reserved, and has beautiful manners. In, I think, every episode, his looks are remarked upon; in a later plot point, he becomes the star of a viral video because he is a man who is somehow handsome and nice enough to open the door for people. Ri Jeong-hyeok is also seeking justice for the politically motivated murder of his brother. He is an incredible pianist. He has several fighting scenes that I can only describe as John Wick–esque. Ri Jeong-hyeok also sulks, makes poor decisions, takes video games too seriously, and hurts the feelings of people around him. He is a person. He is a North Korean person. I was ashamed that the first time I had thought seriously about North Koreans as people was via the vehicle of an attractive South Korean actor. I felt alive because suddenly, unexpectedly, I was learning. I was questioning my beliefs and thinking of ways to make myself a better person. As Ri Jeong-hyeok and Yoon Se-ri suffered, I became more and more attached to them. I grew.

In The Art of Death, in her chapter on suicide, Edwidge Danticat writes: “Our most humble, and perhaps most arrogant, wish is that our writing might help others feels less alone. Our suffering, or our characters’ suffering—be it internal or external, physical or psychological—is never wasted.”

Over the past few years, I’ve felt very cynically about this quote. The rest of the paragraph it’s from doesn’t distinguish a particular group of writers; she’s speaking for us communally. When I’ve read literature by white writers, there have always been small moments and stylistic reminders that this writing is not meant for me. For example, the number of times Black characters are the only ones raced. When racism comes up it’s used to show readers that hey, this white protagonist is a great person, and then, when the brief moment is done, it’s back to all-white characters, all-white spaces. 

There is no consideration that those settings and choices also say something deep about the ways race and inequity in the United States work. I’ve felt regularly, subtly abandoned by a lot of contemporary white writing.

I’ve also struggled to accept the consolation in that quote because for so long, it has felt like mainstream publishing’s abiding interest in Black life is in order to see us suffer in ways that fit their narrative of us. Drug dealing, slavery, an interracial romance so that white readers can easily think when they finish: yes, love sees no color. It’s hard for me to see the optimism inherent in Danticat’s statement, to always keep in mind the wellspring of empathy that could happen if there was more room to tell many different kinds of stories.

My suffering is never wasted. I’m here. I’m writing. My suffering is a part of my creative life for better and for worse. But now I’m thinking of a parallel statement: my happiness is never wasted. It’s time to build a reservoir of joy in my creative life. The question I keep returning to now, especially in this moment, is how can I put just as much emphasis on the idea that happiness, too, might make others feel less alone? How do writers—how do I—make sure that the full complexity of being alive is never forgotten, never wasted?

In Crash Landing on You, Se-ri finds a community that she’s never had before in her life. Women and men to drink and commiserate with, people to tease and argue with who never expected to have a friend quite like her. These are characters whose countries have consistently been at war, who at this point have been steeped for generations in dehumanizing rhetoric about one another. Crash Landing on You never wastes its joy. It turns the camera on friendships: a surprise birthday party filled with song and elaborate bouquets; a roasted potato eaten by a campfire; chicken wings and a soccer game; and taking a lover’s hand in the movie theater as the lights dim.

During the golden hour, I sit on my porch and read a friend’s new book. I pick my first pea from the garden and tell my husband, “I can’t believe how sweet this is.” I talk to a friend on the phone for hours, until words are gone and we’re only listening to each other breathe. I won’t waste these moments.

(Source: The Paris Review)

Suicide in Japan: Seeking to part the dark clouds as pandemic threatens recent progress

The death of ‘Terrace House’ star Hana Kimura in May has thrust the issue of youth suicide back into the national spotlight at a time when anxiety has already been heightened amid a pandemic

[Warning: Some readers may find this content distressing.]

Eriko Kobayashi was 21 when she first tried to kill herself.

“It felt like a weight was being lifted off my shoulders,” Kobayashi says, looking back 21 years to the first of her four suicide attempts. “I felt that all my troubles were about to go away and I was going to be comfortable. I felt liberated.”

At the time, Kobayashi was working at a publishing company in Tokyo, having finally found a job following a long and frustrating search after graduating from junior college during Japan’s 1990s “employment ice age.” The hours of unpaid overtime soon left her exhausted, however, and her pay was so low that she began stealing food from supermarkets.

ILLUSTRATION BY OSLO DAVIS

Kobayashi eventually decided to take an overdose of pills she had been prescribed to deal with mental health issues and woke up in a hospital three days later, after a friend had found her unconscious.

Now 42, Kobayashi works for a nonprofit organization related to mental health issues and has also written four books that deal with aspects of her life, including her struggle with depression, her time living on welfare and her relationship with her family.

Although she can now look back on her suicide attempts and reflect that it would have been “a waste” if she had died then, she knows that many others are suffering as she did.

“It’s difficult to ask for help,” Kobayashi says. “By the time someone decides to take their own life, it’s likely they will have had a lot of disappointment in their life. Maybe they were bullied at school and their teacher did nothing or the other kids just stood by and watched. Maybe they wanted their parents to act a certain way and they didn’t. When you’ve had a series of disappointments and you’ve felt that despair, the feeling that no one will help you even if you ask grows stronger.”

Eriko Kobayashi, 42, works for a nonprofit organization related to mental health issues and has also written four books that deal with aspects of her life, including her struggle with depression, her time living on welfare and her relationship with her family. | COURTESY OF ERIKO KOBAYASHI

Japan has made serious strides in reducing its suicide rate since the dark days of the late 1990s, when layoffs triggered by the Asian financial crisis helped drive the number of annual cases over 30,000 for the first time in 1998.

The figure peaked at 34,427 in 2003 but has since been on the decline, falling every year since 2009. Last year, the number dropped to 20,169, the lowest since authorities started keeping records in 1978.

Experts have credited an improving economy and the 2006 introduction of the Basic Act for Suicide Prevention as the main reasons for the reduction in numbers. However, the fact that Japan still has the highest suicide rate among the Group of Seven countries — 16 per 100,000 people — proves there is still much work to be done.

For the thousands of people directly affected, it can be difficult to escape suicide’s shadow.

“I met my wife about 10 years ago and we got married in November 2014,” says “Yuki,” a 33-year-old office worker from Ibaraki Prefecture whose wife suffers from depression and has tried to kill herself on more than one occasion.

“She can’t work, she can’t do everyday chores, she loses her confidence, thinks negatively about herself and when it gets stronger, she says she wants to kill herself,” says Yuki, who asked to be called by a pseudonym owing to privacy concerns. “At first, I tried to make things better for her, even if it was just a little, but there’s a limit to how much you can do on your own. Sometimes I would try to help her and it would really take its toll on me.”

Yuki eventually found help from Light Ring, a nonprofit organization that teaches young people how to support friends or partners who are suicidal while also taking care of their own mental health.

Light Ring is a nonprofit organization that teaches young people how to support friends or partners who are suicidal while also taking care of their own mental health. | COURTESY OF LIGHT RING

Light Ring Director Ayaka Ishii says feelings of despair or anger can transmit easily to young people who are trying to help, and many struggle to cope.

Ishii says it is important for young people supporting someone to look after their own well-being, seek help from others and maintain a sense of distance. She stresses the importance of “active listening” — knowing when to offer advice or give a friendly nudge while also offering a shoulder to cry on.

Ishii also acknowledges the difficulties that come with such a role.

Light Ring Director Ayaka Ishii says feelings of despair or anger can transmit easily to young people who are trying to help, and many struggle to cope. | COURTESY OF LIGHT RING

“One thing I often hear them asking is how they should respond if they get a message from the person in the middle of the night,” Ishii says. “Communication on social media is frequent and quick, and a reply can come within seconds. How do you create a bit of distance when you’re feeling tired? What if the person dies in the time when you’re not replying? These are some of the problems they have to deal with.”

While the overall number of suicides in Japan has been steadily falling for the past 10 years, the number of young people killing themselves has remained stubbornly constant. A total of 659 people under the age of 20 died by suicide last year, up 60 from the previous year. That was the only age group to see an increase.

The death of Hana Kimura, a 22-year-old professional wrestler and star of reality TV show “Terrace House,” who apparently killed herself last month after receiving a stream of negative messages on social media, has brought the issue of youth suicide back into the national spotlight.

Midori Komori can relate. She and her husband, Shinichiro, have been fighting to raise awareness of the consequences of bullying since their 15-year-old daughter, Kasumi, killed herself in 1998 after being harassed by three classmates at her high school.

Midori and Shinichiro knew that Kasumi was being bullied and tried various ways to stop it, including speaking to the school and the parent-teachers’ association several times, and taking their daughter to a psychiatric clinic. When that proved unsuccessful and Kasumi took her own life, the couple tried to find answers by contacting the school and writing letters to their daughter’s classmates and their parents.

Bond Project is a nonprofit organization in Tokyo that helps women who are suffering problems in their teens and 20s. | COURTESY OF BOND PROJECT

The school, however, denied that any bullying had taken place on its grounds, and the parents returned the letters unopened or told the Komoris to leave them alone. Midori and Shinichiro ultimately found themselves shunned by a community that preferred to turn its back rather than confront a painful truth, and the couple have been trying ever since to educate children and teachers about the dangers of bullying through their nonprofit organization, Gentle Heart Project.

“The internet and social media mean things have changed completely in the years since Kasumi died,” says Midori. “People think they’re just teasing people on the internet and it’s not a big deal, but it’s like a bomb going off for the person on the receiving end of it.

“When a lot of people are doing it, people think their part in the wrongdoing is very minor,” she says. “But which is worse: To be bullied by one person or to be bullied by 100 people? Even elementary school kids can understand that.”

Bullying, however, is just one of the many reasons why young people take their own lives. Other factors might include family relationships, abuse, academic pressure, mental health issues or financial worries.

Jun Tachibana, who leads Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Bond Project, which helps women who are suffering problems in their teens and 20s, says she often encounters young people who feel there is no place for them in society.

“These kids feel like there’s no way out for them, and the place where they seek help is very important,” Tachibana says. 

“These are often kids who have had bad experiences with adults, so they don’t trust them. A lot of them choose not to seek help from adults and they try to solve their problems themselves. Then, when they act on an impulse, they don’t have anyone they can turn to.”

Bond Project's Jun Tachibana says she often encounters young people who feel there is no place for them in society. | COURTESY OF BOND PROJECT

Child welfare legislation in Japan only covers children up to the age of 18, and Tachibana says young people over that age who are suffering abuse at the hands of a family member often go unrecognized.

“A young girl in that situation came to us today and we took her to the authorities to deal with it, but I don’t know whether she’ll be given protection or not,” Tachibana says. “As things stand now, there isn’t much understanding toward people who are abused by a family member.”

Some suicide prevention groups feel a proactive approach is needed to find the people who slip through society’s cracks.

Jiro Ito is the head of OVA, a nonprofit organization that uses information and communication technology to connect people thinking of taking their own lives with groups that can help them. Ito used to work in a mental health clinic, and it was there that he realized that people who are thinking of suicide rarely verbalize their intentions.

OVA's Jiro Ito | COURTESY OF OVA

Ito did some research into how often people type “I want to die” or similar phrases into internet search engines, and he was shocked to discover that it generally occurs around 130,000 times a month in Japan. With this in mind, Ito founded OVA and began using advertising technology to make information about suicide prevention services automatically pop up on computer or phone screens whenever the user searches for words or phrases related to suicide.

“It’s very difficult to find people who are thinking about killing themselves,” Ito says. “We use an advertising system that was originally intended for companies to attract customers, only we use it to identify people at a high risk of suicide. We have a proactive approach to finding people and reaching out to them.

“With young people, especially boys, their self-esteem is very fragile. They’re afraid that if they ask for help, they’ll be seen as weak. A lot of young people, especially boys, are resistant to the idea of sending out an SOS. It’s important to communicate with them in a way that’s easy for them, using the internet and social media and so on.”

Other suicide prevention groups rely on people to come to them, including Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center, a hotline call center with a staff of more than 30 volunteers who work in shifts each night between 8 p.m. and 5:30 a.m.

OVA is a nonprofit organization that uses information and communication technology to connect people thinking of taking their own lives with groups that can help them. | COURTESY OF OVA

Director and head researcher Akiko Mura has been volunteering at Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center for the past 19 years, and she says the organization receives around 11,000 calls a year, mostly from people between the ages of 30 and 50. Although the ratio of people who actually take their own life in Japan is roughly 70 percent men to 30 percent women, Mura estimates that roughly 60 percent of the callers to Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center are women and 40 percent are men.

Mura says it is important to let the callers know they can speak frankly, and she believes shifting attitudes in recent years have made it easier for them to do that.

“Suicide used to be taboo in Japan,” Mura says. “Until about 20 years ago, it was difficult to even say the word ‘suicide.’ Now, people have become able to publicly say that they want to die. I think the idea that there are people who want to die — and that there’s nothing exceptional about that — has taken root.”

Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center was forced to suspend services following the COVID-19 outbreak but has been able to operate two shifts per week from June. | COURTESY OF TOKYO SUICIDE PREVENTION CENTER

Mura also acknowledges that there may be dark clouds on the horizon. Tokyo Suicide Prevention Center, like more than 80 percent of suicide prevention groups, according to a poll taken in late April, has had its operations disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and had to suspend its nightly hotline in early April. The service resumed once a week from May 12, and started operating twice a week from June.

Health ministry statistics showed that suicides in April fell by 20 percent from the previous year, but experts warn that the drop may only be temporary. Reasons for the decrease could include the closure of schools in March, more employees working from home or a general sense of unity in the face of a crisis.

A study by Kyoto University’s Research Resilience Unit published at the end of April predicted that the economic fallout from the pandemic could cause an additional 140,000 to 270,000 suicides in the years to come, and support groups are bracing for a tough time ahead.

“Of course, the economy will be a factor, but I think it will be the sense of isolation coupled with the bad economy that will make people anxious and unable to see a way forward,” Mura says. “I think feelings of hopelessness and anxiety will be a big factor for people who are thinking about suicide.”

Author Kobayashi says a bad family environment and childhood bullying gave her a negative outlook on life which would cross the line into suicidal thoughts whenever she was faced with adversity. Those thoughts would crystallize over a period of three or four months and, if she felt there was no one who could help her find a way out, she would resort to desperate measures.

Kobayashi says she still suffers from depression and the thought that she wants to die still remains with her. Now, however, she says she is better equipped to cope with problems when they arise.

ILLUSTRATION BY OSLO DAVIS

“I’ve now got a job and I’ve got friends, so I don’t feel like I want to die straight away,” Kobayashi says. “When I feel lonely or things aren’t going well at work, I feel like I want to die but not to the point where I would actually go ahead with it.

“The feeling that things are so bad that you want to die is just one moment,” she says. “It’s just an emotion that lasts for one moment.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis and needs help, resources are available. In case of an emergency in Japan, please call 119 for immediate assistance. The TELL Lifeline is available for those who need free and anonymous counseling at 03-5772-0992. For those in other countries, visit https://bit.ly/Suicide-Hotlines for a detailed list of resources and assistance. Light Ring is holding a free online event aimed at young people supporting those in need from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday, June 27. Details can be found at http://lightring.or.jp/rings-1.

(Source: JT)