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Sri Lanka

LIFE EDUCATION PROPOSED TO TACKLE SUICIDES IN DIASPORA DIOCESE

Updated: October 14, 1999 05:00 PM GMT
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Life education programs and the strengthening of family apostolate may help reduce the high incidence of suicide in Uva, the province with the highest rate of suicide in Sri Lanka, says a Badulla diocese priest.

"All those interested in social issues must take steps to minimize this extreme reaction of the youth in Uva," Father Sunil Anthony Wijeratne wrote in "Uva Communion," journal of the diocese in the south-central province.

"We have not paid sufficient attention to the villages or the remote areas of the diocese as much as to the estate sector," the priest wrote.

The diaspora diocese has about 15,000 Catholics living scattered in the predominantly Buddhist Uva. The province has a population of over a million comprising mainly poor farmers and tea estate laborers in the remote hills.

After interviewing parents of those who committed suicide, Father Wijeratne identified love problems as a major cause. A number of young people commit suicide for frivolous reasons, he said.

Other reasons given were the unwillingness to accept parental advice regarding studies, or even the inability to manage water for cultivation.

Suicide has become an issue of household talk in Sri Lanka because of its high incidence throughout the country, the priest added.

Uva, Sri Lanka´s third largest and least developed province, has the highest rate of suicide in the country, which reportedly has the highest rate of suicide in the world.

END

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