Alarmed: 13 suicides in 2025, hundreds of calls for help

Data for the first nine months of 2025 shows a disturbing situation in Kosovo's field of mental health, turning to attention the lack of policies and institutional mechanisms for preventing suicide.

According to the Kosovo Police, 13 people have committed suicide in Kosovo, a phenomenon which occurs from different factors -- economic, social, psychological, mental disorders, problems, lack of other confidence.

Meanwhile, the Centre for the Prevention of Suicide “Life Line” for the first nine months of the year we left after, there have been 800 calls of people with Scicidal thinking, 3-4 thousand chats and 160 lost calls.

Health institutions report that each day people with various psychiatric disorders, including cases of self - sacrifice, are treated until mental - health professionals stress the need for increased care in treatment and public reporting of such cases. According to them, the way media reporting can have a direct effect on society, especially on vulnerable individuals.

QKUK Psychiatric Clinic Director Faton Kutlovci has said of Kosova Preris that each day people with psychiatric disorders, including cases of Swedish ideas, are treated in this clinic. According to him, treatment is conducted with special care and on the basis of professional appreciation for each occasion.

Kutlovci has appealed that media report responsibly on these cases, warning that detailed reporting may have a negative impact on society.

In addition to the unrealistic media report, Kuttlovci has said there are two other negative effects, stigmatma, the words that if you visit psychiatry you are a person with major psychiatric defects and the influence of pharmacists, who tell them that the therapy they receive is severe and the person with the scycidal thinking interrupts therapy.

He has also indicated that the current law on mental health has shortcomings and that a new draft of the bill is already in the phase of public consultations.

“In the Psychiatric Clinic, on a daily basis we treat even ambulatorally, but also hospitalally, people who manifest psychiatric disorders, who can give sucicidal ideas. Depending on the psychological disorder that you manifest, we also make planning to treat the person who manifests sucicidal ideas, because we have to be very careful... When considering the report of those who have committed suicide, we should be very careful, because this is very harmful because reporting on these cases should not be detailed, because we should consider the fact that during this period, in our society, there may also be a certain number of people who manifest sucicidal ideas, but who have yet taken the force to perform the act, and if the media now report it with pictures, even the place where it happened, and how it is done, to develop what kinds of people are suspected of cheating, where they copy ideas that only affect the person that I can speak ill-fatably. The current mental health law has shortcomings and these shortcomings have also been outlined by the Kosovo Parliament's Commission for Health. They have given the recommendations where it needs to be changed and the Ministry of Health has established the commission, which has already completed the draft mental health bill, which is now only in public consultations”, Kutlovvci said.

Meanwhile, the director of the organisation “Life Line”, Bind Skeja, has declared that this organisation is facing financial hardship and lack of staff, which has forced cutting service hours. From 2: 00 p.m. to 2:00 as it has been, it has been forced to cut from 6:00 to 10:00, because of this time, is that there are mostly calls at this time, with three supervisors, five operators and 20 volunteer operators.

He has announced that hundreds of calls for help have been accepted over the past few months, while thousands of communications have been carried out through digital platforms.

Skeja has stressed that Kosovo still does not have a specific law or strategy for preventing suicide and that formal co-operation with central institutions is lacking, despite the training this organisation offers to security institutions.

For the first nine months, we had about 800 calls, and by the end of 2024 we also opened up the opportunity to write through a chat application, and there we had more than 3-4 thousand chats, and here we don't necessarily reflect unique individuals in the sense that each call is from another person, it was that the same person called us several times, we can't identify with the reason we keep anonymity. Within the first six months of 2025 we've been tracking how many missing calls they've been trying to call us, but we haven't had enough staff to answer, there's about 160 calls... We've come to a situation, we don't have the money to continue the lifeline as we thought it would, so we had to cut schedule. 7:58 I don't know a policy that's been passed on preventing suicide, and there's no strategy for this mental health law I don't mention suicide anywhere, says Skeya.

On the other hand, psychologist Christian Halilaj has explained that long depressive situations, loss of motivation, and destructive thinking are key factors that lead one to serious psychological crises. He has stressed that professional treatment and psychological support are necessary, since family assistance is often not enough to cope with such situations.

“A long phase in a depressive state and a loss of motivation for life and contact, a person's destructive and destructive thinking deterines his path to suicide, and that's like a kind of solution to get away from the void that a person in a state of crisis and depressive view as a kind of solution to the outcome of the pain. 6:27 These individuals mostly need to receive psychological and professional treatment, because family assistance is often inadequate to reinforce the system of values and self-confidence that a person in a depressive state of” can then say Halilaj.

According to Kosovo Police data, during 2025, 13 people committed suicide, while in 2024 19 persons and 2023 42 people committed such an act.

If you have Swedish thoughts or feel in a depressed state, visit psychologist or call on the Life Line free of charge at 0800 12345 or write on chat as an anonymous person, the KP reports.