Year after year, we are witnessing an increase in the trend of student suicides. Where are we going wrong?

The Way We Are Wired: Our Toxic Learning Culture

Every year, around the world, approximately 800,000 individuals take their own lives. Of these, 20% occur in India. In 2021, India documented over 164,000 suicides, translating to a rate of 12 suicides per 100,000 people, or an average of 450 suicides daily. Many of these suicides involve laborers, farmers, students, and housewives. As per NCRB Data, 12,526 students in India took their own lives in 2020, and this figure increased to 13,089 in 2021.

Maharashtra had the highest number of student deaths by suicide in 2021 with 1,834 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh with 1,308, and Tamil Nadu with 1,246 deaths.

India is a multi-cultural and multi-faceted country with a booming economy. Our social fabric is deeply rooted in respect, reverence, hard work, triumph, and celebrations. From time immemorial, we have seen adversities of all kinds and fought for independence and change. The art of our resilient fight and triumph are retold in stories, festivals, and songs. But despite all the show of colors and sound, we have been betraying our students. One must look at the statistics to understand how we are systematically decimating thousands of dreams year after year.

THE STATISTICS:

Student suicides in India have been trending upwards since 2005 with a rapid increase beginning from the year 2012. The digital revolution, growing economy, job opportunities, career prospects, etc. everything has been growing since 2005. The biggest peak began in 2019 and problems related to COVID were the leading factor among others. But we should have seen similar patterns for the same factors elsewhere in the world too. The short answer is yes, we have but once you dig deeper into the numbers you will realize Expectations, Stress, Bullying, and Discrimination emerging as the true evil behind India’s numbers compared to that of the rest of the world.

The average Joe from anywhere in the world does not have expectations from self and the ones imposed on him by others the way it systematically gets done in our society. Big dreams and big expectations are imposed right from our childhood by our parents, relatives, teachers, friends, and even our neighbors. Our traditions and upbringing have taught us to be closely-knit and follow certain codes of conduct when it comes to independent planning, strategizing, and decision-making. Our true social expectations and the desire for a self-made identity are usually not given much importance. Above all, when things do go south, we indulge in blame games, excuses, and gossip rather than studying what went wrong, understanding flaws, regrouping resources, and restarting our efforts.

On March 4th, 2005, Sudhanshu Pandey, a class XI student of DPS-Noida woke up for the last time leaving a suicide note that read, "Bye everybody. I'm committing suicide. Nobody else is involved. I have decided to end my life because the pressure has started to get to me, and I cannot take it any longer. I love my family and I hope they will understand. I love my brother Siddharth and I would like to wish him all the best for the future... I hate the Eco teacher but I'm not doing this because of her."

Sudhanshu Pandey was known among his friends for his happy-go-lucky attitude. He was a cheerful 17-year-old who was weak in his studies, a fact known to his parents and friends. And he never showed signs of it bothering him. Then what made Sudhanshu take the extreme step? We will have to come back to this.

This year, Manjot Singh, an 18-year-old medical aspirant, who had scored 93 percent marks in the Class 12 assessment told his friend that he would be next to commit suicide when they were discussing the increasing number of student deaths in Kota, Rajasthan. Manjot was a fun-loving, smart boy with a great future. He came to Kota in April and enrolled himself in a coaching institution and by August, we lost him forever. He left the following suicide note along with a birthday wish for his father.

Last year, Kota had a total of 15 student suicides but this year so far Kota has claimed the lives of 24 young aspirants who left their homes to build a future for themselves. What is Kota doing to its students? We will have to come back to this too.

On February 12, Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-old student studying at IIT Mumbai, took his own life. His sister Jhanvi Solanki revealed, “When he came last month, he told me, and mom-dad, that there's caste discrimination happening there. His friends came to know that he belongs to Scheduled Castes, so their behavior towards him changed. They stopped talking to him, they stopped hanging out with him.” A suicide note was recovered later confirming the same and naming the individual responsible for his death.

Out of 103 students who died by suicide in premier educational institutions of the country from the year 2018 to March 2023, 35 were from IITs, 29 from Central Universities, 24 from NITs, 11 from AIIMS, and 4 from IIMs.

Our teens are not just stressed but their emotional and motivational needs are not being met. Some can cope with it while others find themselves in a constant battle of choices and when they run out of one, they are left with just one choice to end everything once and for all.

REASONS:

In 2021, 56,543 people aged between 18 and 30 took their own lives. In 714 of these cases, the individuals cited failing an examination as the motive behind their suicide. Meanwhile, there were 864 individuals under the age of 18 who died by suicide for the same reason during that time frame. Therefore, 94.32% of individuals who were driven to suicide due to exam failure were under the age of 30.

According to Nelson Vinod Moses, founder of the Suicide Prevention India Foundation, “COVID-19 was an important factor in increasing the mental health issues of the young adult population. During this period, they were dependent on digital learning, and when they were put back into the normal world, many were unable to even communicate properly, develop friendships, and bond socially.”

The strain is exacerbated by the demands of achieving academically and being actively involved in extracurricular activities, coupled with the pressure to maintain a notable presence on social media platforms, where appearance and popularity become sources of anxiety for young individuals. Concurrently, parents harbor fears of inadequacy, feeling obligated to enroll their offspring in prestigious preparatory courses for IIT or NEET to secure their futures, as highlighted by specialists.

With the onset of the examination period, students find themselves engulfed in a continuous cycle of anxiety, a condition that rapidly becomes their daily norm. Their pleas for delay, apprehensions regarding the competitive landscape, and fears over the complexity of the exams frequently go unnoticed, ushering in a detrimental decline in mental well-being.

In today's fiercely competitive educational landscape, privilege often overshadows merit. Numerous publicly financed establishments, including the University of Delhi, impose exceptionally high initial cut-off standards, fostering an environment of increased competition and limiting educational opportunities predominantly to individuals with sufficient financial resources to invest in preparatory training.

This issue is glaringly evident in the admission protocols of esteemed educational bodies in India, where entrance is granted based on the outcomes of challenging exams such as the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical institutes. These systems essentially epitomize the hurdles prospective students must overcome, which goes beyond merely proving their academic aptitude. As per the information from the National Medical Council, there exist over 500 medical colleges in India, collectively offering a maximum of 86,649 spots. Yet, from 2018 to 2021, an annual average of approximately 1.4 million candidates competed for these positions in the medical entrance exams, as reported in the yearly press releases from NEET. The same is the case with engineering colleges. But does that still answer the question? Even if you provide an equivalent number of admissions as the number of aspirants by building more educational institutions, the problem will then extend to the employment sector.

The responsibility to mitigate this crisis falls on the shoulders of various stakeholders including the government, educational institutions, the media, parents, and peer groups. Moreover, it is acknowledged that mental health services are predominantly available in Tier I cities in India, leaving a substantial segment of the population in smaller cities and towns without necessary mental health support, a sentiment echoed by experts.

The National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 underscores the importance of establishing counseling systems within schools and universities to help manage stress and facilitate emotional adjustment. In January 2023, the University Grants Commission (UGC) released the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, developed in conjunction with the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. This strategy adopts a multifaceted approach to reduce academic stress, introducing measures such as peer-assisted learning and offering technical education in various regional languages. Furthermore, the government has launched a holistic initiative called "MANODARPAN" aimed at offering psychological assistance to students, educators, and families. This initiative is committed to promoting mental and emotional well-being not just amid the COVID-19 crisis, but also in the forthcoming post-pandemic period.

Suicide, ranking as the fourth highest cause of death among young people, presents a grave concern in a nation where 65 percent of the population is below the age of 35, establishing itself as one of the principal causes of death. Given this, implementing a national strategy for suicide prevention emerges as a crucial move, not only in honoring India's dedication to promoting overall health and mental well-being but also in meeting the Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the World Health Organization.

My Two Cents: As someone who has been in and out of depression, I have seen some tough times at school and in college. Many like me are resilient and understand the darkness that can suck the soul out of an individual. I have been lucky to have supportive parents and siblings. But my biggest question is to our society, media, and educational institutions.

Why despite years of knowledge, statistical data, and key insights we have been unable to reform our ways?

Major causes of student stress based on studies list the following as contributing factors: Bullying, social media, Domestic environment, pressure, nuclear family, biological, and relationship. The pressure to achieve a significant milestone on all fronts of life is too much of an expectation we impose on our teens and the teens on themselves. Apart from the reforms that we so desperately need, there is a much bigger need to alter our ideological expectations from the young generation.

We must improve our reach-out services such as Mental health services and make them available in every city, town, and village. It should be a core feature of all educational institutions. As a society, we must embrace a positive mental attitude and put our focus on overall personality development. We must encourage alternative career prospects and hobbies that motivate our students. Governments everywhere must provide stricter anti-bully policies and substance abuse prevention plans.

From the lives of Sudhanshu Pandey, Manjot Singh, and Darshan Solanki, we can understand that depression and suicidal tendencies may or may not manifest on the outside. Often the one who smiles the most hides the most pain. We also learn that being smart and intelligent does little to prevent suicidal thoughts. We must know that everyone around us is suffering in one way or the other. Regardless of the fact, whether we can identify who is fighting their demon the hardest, we must all come together for the celebration of life. The change must begin by altering our expectations of ourselves. Let us learn to go easy on ourselves. As a society, we must send our students not to places where smart individuals are pressurized with undue expectations and segregated into batches based on their intelligence and marks, instead send them to institutions that build their character along with providing multiple opportunities to explore over a wide range of career opportunities. Let us create stricter environments where bullying, raging, and all forms of discrimination are impossible. An environment where ideas for nation-building are fostered.

India’s history in the education sector was once marveled upon by countries as far north as Russia and as far west as Europe. Hundreds of years ago, we had students from different backgrounds, races, and colors studying together in the pursuit of transformative knowledge. That is the true purpose of all educational endeavors.

Images and statisitcs courtesy of: Factly.in

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