【经济学人】印度将“自杀未遂”合法化丨2017.03.30丨总第860期

GORAV GUPTA has spent his life helping the mentally ill. But when suicidal patients seek help at his psychiatric hospital in Delhi, he turns them away. Mr Gupta says he cannot handle the “legal hassle” that might ensue if they try to end their lives while in his care.

GORAV GUPTA一生致力于这项一精神疾病，但是当有人去他在德里的精神病咨询医院求助时，他不接诊。Gupta解释说，要是他的病人在他的治疗期间选择自杀，那么他可搞不定的这个“法律上的大麻烦”。

Attempted suicide, as well as “any act towards the commission” of suicide, has for years been a crime in India. But on March 27th the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house, passed a package of mental-health reforms, among them one that decriminalises attempted suicide. The bill declares access to psychiatric care to be a right for all Indians, and promises a huge boost in funding to help provide it.

数年来，自杀未遂及有集体自杀倾向的行为在印度都被定为犯罪。然而，在3月27日，印度众议院的下议院通过了精神健康的改革方案，其中一项便是自杀未遂行为合法化。这项法案宣布所有印度人都有机会有权利接受精神治疗，并且法案还保证会大力支持这个项目。

Policymakers in India have long argued that people driven to attempt suicide need rehabilitation. But under the previous law, they instead faced punishment: a fine and up to a year in prison. Prosecution was rare, but the threat of it to extract bribes from the families of those who attempted suicide was not, says Soumitra Pathare, who helped draft the new legislation（读者试译句）. Others point out that the government has previously used laws against attempted suicide to lock up activists who stage hunger strikes.

印度的决策者认为那些自杀未遂的人们是需要接受精神治疗的。但是先前的法律让这些人接受的是惩罚：受一年或一年以上的牢狱之苦。帮助起草这项法案的Soumitra Pathare说，“期待您的翻译，将您的理解留言在文章下方留言处，第二天将会有长难句解析哟~。”其他人指出,政府曾用自杀未遂行为的法律来制止激进分子的绝食抗议。

The next step in mental-health reform is to allocate more money and expand the workforce, says Mr Pathare. Mental health made up just 0.06% of India’s health budget in 2011; the median in countries of comparable development is 1.9%. Despite having a population more than 50 times bigger than Australia’s, India has around the same number of psychiatrists (just 3,500).

Pathare说精神健康改革方案的下一步就是要增加拨款和扩大员工队伍。2011年印度医疗预算中，心理健康预算只占到0.06%。而在类似的中等发展中国家中，心理健康预算占到了1.9%。比如印度的人口超澳大利亚50多倍，但是精神科医生的数量却是一样的。

Yet the reforms are unlikely to reduce India’s suicide rate, which, adjusting for age, is almost double that of America. Researchers often attribute large numbers of suicides in Asian countries to “impulsive” acts in moments of crisis, rather than diagnosable mental disorders. Limiting access to pesticides, poisons that are close at hand for most rural Indians, may prevent such deaths, as it has in Sri Lanka. Unlike many countries, India has no national suicide-prevention plan. More can be done to break the taboos that prevent the depressed from opening up to friends and doctors.

根据年龄阶段判定，印度的自杀率几乎是美国的2倍，而这项改革对于印度自杀率几乎毫无帮助。研究者经常把亚洲国家大量的自杀举动归咎于危险时刻的冲动行为而不是诊断为精神错乱。在印度农村，限制轻易就拿到杀虫剂，毒药的一些途径，可能会阻止一些死亡，因为在里斯兰卡就有这样的事。印度不像其他许多国家有国民自杀保护条例。因为法令禁忌的原因，几乎不能向他们朋友或者医生倾诉烦恼，从而走出低迷。而能够帮助这些人的，也就只要打破这项禁忌。

he big challenge is to improve the lot of India’s young, among whom suicide is the leading cause of death. Suicide rates in Asia tend to shoot up as people enter old age; in India the opposite is true. The suicide rate for women aged 15-29 is more than double that of any other country except Suriname (which has a large Indian population) and Nepal (which shares many cultural similarities). In future they, and other Indians, may find it easier to seek psychological help without fear. But the world they are living in cannot be regulated away.

自杀已经成为了印度年轻人死亡的主要原因，所以现在所面临的巨大挑战就是如何改变他们走向自杀的命运。随着人口的老龄化，亚洲的自杀率在迅速上升；然而在印度情况却截然相反。印度15-29岁女性的自杀率比除苏里南(大部分人口是印度人)和尼泊尔(文化之中有许多相似之处)外的亚洲国家女性自杀率的要高出两倍多。在不久的将来，这些女孩子们以及其他印度人也许可以不带恐惧地寻求心理医生的帮助。但是他们所处的国度将变得无法管制。

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