Lee An­na Ma­haraj

“Your pur­pose on this earth, your pres­ence on this earth mat­ters and if no­body said it to you be­fore, you need to be­lieve that you mat­ter.”

That’s the ad­vice Satesh Ram­jass has for those strug­gling with men­tal health is­sues and sui­ci­dal ideation.

The 40-year-old Pe­nal res­i­dent found­ed the I Mat­ter Move­ment, a sui­cide pre­ven­tion non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, in March 2026 af­ter a deeply per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence prompt­ed a mis­sion to help oth­ers.

“The move­ment would have been born out of a per­son­al tragedy that hap­pened in my fam­i­ly with my nephew at­tempt­ing sui­cide. He at­tempt­ed but thank­ful­ly he’s still with us,” Ram­jass re­called.

In No­vem­ber 2025, his then 19-year-old nephew was suf­fer­ing from de­pres­sion and at­tempt­ed to end his life.

“He had to be ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal. From then to now, the fam­i­ly has been thrown in­to a whirl­wind of chal­lenges with him, be­cause due to cir­cum­stances, he need­ed ur­gent med­ical care,” he said.

With his nephew in need of crit­i­cal surgery, Ram­jass start­ed the page as a fundrais­er, ini­tial­ly us­ing it as an av­enue to sell I Mat­ter-brand­ed T-shirts.

“It was nev­er in­tend­ed to be a foun­da­tion. It was in­tend­ed to raise funds to help him with surgery costs and med­ical bills. So, we start­ed to sell po­lo t-shirts with the I Mat­ter lo­go on it to give peo­ple some­thing that says I mat­ter, so you feel a dif­fer­ent sense of be­long­ing, you feel as though you re­al­ly mat­ter and your pres­ence mat­ters,” he said.

How­ev­er, Ram­jass re­called that there was an over­whelm­ing re­sponse from peo­ple who faced some­thing sim­i­lar.

“I was so sur­prised that so many peo­ple start­ed to speak up about de­pres­sion, about sui­ci­dal thoughts, about how they feel on a day-to-day ba­sis. And a lot of par­ents con­tact­ed us about what their child or teenage child is go­ing through in the school sys­tem, in their per­son­al lives, and how we can help. And that is where it start­ed from,” he ex­plained.

What be­gan as a mis­sion to raise funds for his nephew’s surgery has now de­vel­oped in­to much more.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­jass, I Mat­ter Move­ment aims to ed­u­cate and pro­vide re­sources about men­tal health and sui­cide.

He shared that the or­gan­i­sa­tion works hand-in-hand with a team of pro­fes­sion­als, in­clud­ing a psy­chol­o­gist, re­li­gious lead­ers and var­i­ous ca­reer pro­fes­sion­als, to pro­vide coun­selling and ad­vice for those strug­gling with men­tal health is­sues.

In recog­ni­tion of Sui­cide Pre­ven­tion Month, which is ob­served in Sep­tem­ber, Ram­jass said the I Mat­ter Move­ment has part­nered with HSSL Safe­ty Sys­tems Ltd, which will spon­sor ten men­tal health train­ing pro­grammes for se­lect­ed in­di­vid­u­als be­tween the ages of 14 and 24—an age group he be­lieves needs spe­cial at­ten­tion.

“We are see­ing a ma­jor chal­lenge with chil­dren deal­ing with men­tal health, the pres­sures of school, and then al­so the pres­sures post-sec­ondary school, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those who have not ex­celled at CSEC and they are com­ing out in the world now. I think we need to def­i­nite­ly look at the school sys­tem, par­tic­u­lar­ly Form Fours and Form Fives who are com­ing out there. So many have reached out, be­cause they com­plet­ed that lev­el of ed­u­ca­tion and they don’t know where to go and they start feel­ing as though they are not enough. I think on a na­tion­al lev­el, we need to start look­ing at how we can help these chil­dren, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sec­ondary schools. We need to have that con­ver­sa­tion about how to help them man­age de­pres­sion and sui­cide,” Ram­jass not­ed.

Ram­jass said he be­lieves start­ing a con­ver­sa­tion and keep­ing it alive is how this coun­try can help break stig­mas and taboos as­so­ci­at­ed with sui­cide and de­pres­sion. He al­so en­cour­aged peo­ple to pay at­ten­tion to their loved ones be­cause symp­toms of men­tal ill­ness are some­times un­recog­nis­able.

“From my ex­pe­ri­ence, we saw no signs with my nephew. You know how the ex­perts tell you to look out if they are be­ing qui­eter, if they are by them­selves, if they’re not feel­ing well or if it’s hard for them to get out of bed. When I spoke to his par­ents, and even I saw him on a dai­ly ba­sis, but there were no signs at all. Be­cause these days, young­sters are typ­i­cal­ly re­served and don’t speak out much. But every in­di­vid­ual case is dif­fer­ent. There’s no uni­ver­sal sig­nal to say some­body is de­pressed,” he added.

To­day, Ram­jass says his nephew has im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly and is still un­der­go­ing treat­ment, but he re­mains hope­ful that he will re­cov­er soon. In the mean­time, he is us­ing his fam­i­ly’s ex­pe­ri­ence to raise aware­ness and en­cour­age oth­ers to have con­ver­sa­tions about men­tal health and sui­cide pre­ven­tion.

If you or some­one you know is strug­gling with sui­ci­dal thoughts or men­tal health con­cerns, con­tact 800-COPE or vis­it life­linett.com for sup­port.