We’ve been enduring a mental health crisis for a very long time. Most of us absorb it painfully, despairingly—silently. But sharing our stories helps lessen our burden. So talk to us. Send us your pieces about your struggles, confusions, and battles with mental health. Feel free to express in the way you feel comfortable: an essay, a poem, a story, or anything else. We’ll publish them on the website so that you—and others like you—will know that you are not alone. You can email us at letters@outlookindia.com. ??

An extreme extrapolation of the mental health malaise, suicide, sparks contentious conversations. People who die by it are considered cowards and criminals. But we don’t pause to reflect that those whom we call perpetrators are, in fact, victims. They need our empathy not judgments, helping hands not cruel whips. If the right to live with dignity is essential, then so should be the right to die. This, too, is freedom.

For its next issue, in the week of World Suicide Prevention Day, Outlook takes a considered look at suicides, analysing it in the realms of education, media, cinema, and politics.