Public shaming triggers a feeling of intense humiliation, loss of social identity and perceived exile from the community. And these negative comments strip away context and assign criminal or moral intent where there was an accident, reducing a complex human being to a single moment.

This, according to psychiatrist Dr Varma Deyalsingh who has described the death of 55-year-old grandmother Deera Seepersad as the tragic convergence of acute trauma, overwhelming guilt, complicated grief, and social humiliation, intensified by public shaming on social media.

Seepersad died by suicide on Monday morning, days after her 10-month-old granddaughter drowned in a swimming pool at her home in Diego Martin. In an interview with the Express yesterday, Deyalsingh said humans are wired for belonging and when someone feels publicly condemned, the brain interprets this as social death — a known risk factor for suicide.