Notes on a crisis that demands our attention

Every year, the National Crime Records Bureau releases a number that should stop us in our tracks: nearly 13,000 students die by suicide annually in India. Yet somehow, this staggering figure becomes just another statistic, filed away in reports and forgotten in policy discussions. Behind each of these numbers is a young person who once had dreams, fears, hopes, and an unbearable weight that became too much to carry alone.

As someone working in the mental health field, I find myself constantly wrestling with a fundamental question: how much of this burden belongs to the individual, and how much to the systems we’ve collectively built around them? The more I witness the struggles of young people in our country, the clearer it becomes that we’re not dealing with isolated cases of personal failure, but with a systematic breakdown of the structures meant to nurture and protect our youth.

The endless cycle begins early and rarely relents. Academic competition that starts in primary school and intensifies with each passing year. Parental expectations that transform love into a performance-based contract. A cultural fear of failure so deep that it paralyzes rather than motivates. And perhaps most damaging of all, the sustained silence around mental health that teaches young people that their emotional struggles are shameful secrets to be hidden rather than human experiences to be acknowledged and addressed.

What strikes me most profoundly in this work is how quickly young people learn to internalize these external pressures. They begin to believe, often before they’ve even reached adolescence, that their worth is conditional, that love must be earned through grades, that their value as human beings is determined by their rank in competitive exams, that expressing vulnerability is weakness rather than courage. By the time they reach our colleges and universities, many have already spent years practicing the art of suffering in silence, convinced that asking for help would be admitting defeat.

The academic pressure in our educational institutions has reached levels that would be considered intolerable in almost any other context. Students at prestigious institutions like IITs and medical colleges often describe living under constant surveillance of their own performance, where every test becomes a judgment on their future and every misstep feels catastrophic. The coaching centers that have sprung up across the country, particularly in cities like Kota, create pressure-cooker environments where adolescents are separated from their support systems and thrust into relentless competition with their peers.

But the crisis runs deeper than academic pressure alone. Our mental health infrastructure remains woefully inadequate, leaving countless students to navigate their struggles without professional support. Where counseling services do exist, they’re often overwhelmed, under-resourced, or stigmatized. Students learn early that seeking help for emotional distress marks them as weak or unstable, so they endure in isolation until crisis points that could have been prevented with earlier intervention.

Family dynamics add another layer of complexity to this crisis. Parents, driven by genuine love and concern for their children’s futures, sometimes unknowingly create environments where children become vessels for family aspirations rather than individuals worthy of unconditional love. The fear of disappointing family members often weighs more heavily on students than their own personal struggles, creating a burden that extends far beyond academic performance into fundamental questions of belonging and worth.

Economic pressures compound these challenges significantly. Education loans, uncertain job markets, and the responsibility many young people feel to secure their family’s financial future through their own success create additional stress that can push already vulnerable students toward crisis. For students from marginalized communities, those facing caste-based discrimination, LGBTQ+ students navigating hostile environments, or those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, these pressures are multiplied by additional layers of exclusion and stigma.

What we’re witnessing is not simply a mental health crisis, but a reflection of deeper systemic issues within our educational and social frameworks. The obsession with high-stakes examinations, the lack of holistic career guidance, the persistent stigma around emotional well-being, and insufficient institutional safeguards have collectively created an ecosystem that consistently overlooks the psychological needs of young people. 

We’ve built a system that treats students as production units rather than developing human beings with complex emotional, social, and psychological needs.

The tragedy of student suicides in India reveals something fundamental about our priorities as a society. We’ve become so focused on measurable outcomes, grades, ranks, admissions, placements,that we’ve lost sight of the immeasurable aspects of human development that actually determine whether young people thrive or merely survive. We’ve created environments where mistakes are not survivable, where emotions are unwelcome, where asking for help is stigmatized, and where silence is mistaken for strength.

Yet within this darkness, there are glimmers of hope that suggest transformation is possible. Every time a student feels safe enough to share their struggles, every family that learns to express love unconditionally, every institution that begins to prioritize student well-being alongside academic achievement, these represent victories against the epidemic we face. Change is happening, slowly and often quietly, in counseling rooms, family conversations, and policy discussions across the country.

The Path Forward

Prevention cannot be limited to crisis intervention alone. It must involve cultivating environments where young people can develop resilience not by enduring toxic conditions, but by learning to navigate challenges within supportive, compassionate frameworks. This means creating spaces where vulnerability is met with understanding rather than judgment, where failure is recognized as an essential part of learning rather than a catastrophe, and where students are reminded consistently that their worth extends far beyond any measure of academic achievement.

The path forward requires cultural and institutional shifts that may take generations to fully realize, but which we must begin today. Families need support in learning how to express love unconditionally while still maintaining healthy expectations. Educational institutions must take active responsibility for student mental health rather than treating it as secondary to academic objectives. Our society must develop a more nuanced understanding of success that includes emotional well-being, personal growth, and contribution to community alongside traditional measures of achievement.

The 13,000 students we lose to suicide each year are not statistics or inevitable casualties of a competitive system. They are young people who deserved better from the adults and institutions entrusted with their care. Their lives represent not just personal tragedies, but collective failures that demand our urgent attention and sustained commitment to change.

Until we create environments where young people’s psychological needs are valued as highly as their academic performance, where emotional support is as readily available as academic instruction, and where the measure of a life is its inherent worth rather than its external achievements, we will continue to face this silent epidemic. 

The choice of how we respond as families, educators, mental health professionals, and members of society will determine whether future generations face the same suffering or inherit a world that celebrates their humanity alongside their potential.

Their lives depend on the choices we make today. The question that remains is whether we will continue to accept this crisis as an unfortunate but inevitable byproduct of our educational system, or whether we will finally commit to the difficult work of transformation that these young lives deserve.

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of self-harm, please reach out for help. In India, you can contact:

• Vandrevala Foundation Helpline: +91 9999 666 555
• AASRA: +91 22 2754 6669
• Sneha Foundation: +91 44 2464 0050

Remember: seeking help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Written by: Jahanvi Mishra ( Postgraduate student of psychology and social media coordinator)