Mother Committs Suicide

A story of a women who last week committed suicide at Southall train station with her two children. I found this story really sad when I first read it. The women who is described by a security guard as well spoken, clam, etc committed suicide killing her self her girl, Simran and 26 month old son. Article one, Article two with family photo.

Just Last week another mother took her life, it makes you feel for the kids more then anyone as they are effected the most.

In a separate case another Sikh mother committed suicide this week in
London--it is not clear as to why, her in laws are reported to be very
supportive. She leaves behind her children, eldest daughter only 16
years. Article

Its sad when anyone feels they have no alternative but to committee suicide but when someone takes innocent people with them especially children it just makes you really sad. Those kids had the rest of there life in front of them. Only her family will really know why she did it but it just seems to be a growing situation these days.

Being a young person/adult being bought up in a western country, Sikh religion/culture bit bit of panjabiness mixed in its not easy. The pressures of doing well in education, getting a job, getting married, making your family and parents proud, etc doesn't make life easy.

Our community doesn't seem to understand the problems or they chose to ignore it eighter way the problems just growing. Family life seems to be neglected, parents are not spending time with children as they have been tied up in making a living for there family and giving them everything people around them have. You cant blame parents entirely at the end of the day they have there children present and future in mind.

On the other hand I find in the same home religion has been neglected and ignored and the basic teachings of Sikhi are ignored. If every Sikh child was thought the basics of Sikhi I think it would be a great help to the current situation of depression, drink, drugs, and self harm, amongst the youth, as well as girls vanishing or running away from home in the name of "love." Is it not time Gurdwaras played a more active role in family life not only in encouraging the youth but family activities.

One other thing which I find shamefully is the way professional help is viewed in our community. For some reason counseling is seen as an admission of not being able to cope and therefore its like you have some kind of disease.

So what can be done? You tell me, first thing I would say is learning more about Sikhi and gurbani as it is the key to all over problems. We need to take this stigma off getting professional help encouraging it where needed. Its time we start listening, what about gurdwaras offering counseling. We also need to tackle the problems in our community. We need to do more parchar. Teach our future generation about Sikhi from a young age, encourage families to come gurdwara more and give the youth more responsibility and active role in running the gurdwara organizing activities for them.