Venezuela sees spike in suicides

The patients arrive by night or in broad daylight, alive and sometimes dead. A record surge of suicides in troubled Venezuela is wearing down doctors who work at the university hospital in the Andean state of Merida. People who have tried to kill themselves arrive at an uncertain rhythm that breeds dread in the professionals who receive them. “We live between terror and impotence,” said Ignacio Sandia, who heads the psychiatry department. “We constantly think we can’t do what we should in the moment we’re able to, and we’re terrified that patients commit suicide and there’s nothing we can do for them.” More…