The recent spate of gruesome family murders in Kerala points to a deeply disturbing pattern of mental health issues, drug and alcohol abuse. On February 24, a 23-year-old man confessed to killing his mother, brother, grandmother, uncle, aunt and a friend in a span of seven hours in the town of Venjaramoodu, a few kilometres from state capital Thiruvananthapuram. Only his mother survived the brutal attack, but she remains critical.
Though he claimed financial difficulties and mounting debt as the motives for the murders, he was known to have a drug problem. In January, a 25-year-old man with a known history of drug addiction murdered his mother for ‘birthing’ him. Experts have pointed out that substance abuse can severely impair mental judgement. In December, a 14-year-old boy attacked his mother with a knife when she refused to give him her phone for gaming.
Fortunately, the mother survived the attack. The boy, a school dropout, was reportedly addicted to mobile gaming. A 28-year-old man killed his father with a machete in Thiruvananthapuram’s Vellarada in February. The man, who had discontinued his MBBS studies in China due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reportedly resented his father’s strict rules and regulations considering them an assault on his personal freedom.
In another heinous crime in Vellarada in January, a 36-year-old man allegedly tied up his mother and set her on fire, leading to her death. Police said the man was under the influence of alcohol during the incident.
According to the Kerala police, half the murder cases in the state in the last two months were linked to substance abuse. There is a huge demand for drugs in both rural and urban areas of the state. In recent weeks, the police have seized huge quantities of MDMA, cannabis and other drugs being smuggled in from the neighbouring states.
Liquor-fuelled violence is also on the rise. When the Pinarayi Vijayan government took over in 2016, there were fewer than 30 bars in the state. Now the number has increased to 800, apart from liquor shops. Mental health experts also point to the role of the media in normalising violence, be it videos or films. Repeated viewing of such macabre content desensitises people.
Those individuals, who are already suffering from mental health problems, are heavily influenced by the brutality witnessed in the media and it may well tip them over the edge. The state police have called for a relook at the content, but it remains to be seen how the film industry will respond.
What is undeniable, however, is that a mental health crisis has overtaken Kerala, and it requires urgent intervention. A systematic approach towards tackling the issue involving parents, the authorities and experts is the need of the hour.
