Tipping point

February 2025: A university student is found dead in Haryana. In Odisha, a 20-year-old student from Nepal is found dead in her hostel room. Death by suicide is suspected in both the cases.

2024: 17 lives lost in Kota coaching institutes alone.

A week back, a parent found a note that said, “Sorry, mummy and papa. Please forgive me. I couldn’t make it. Our journey together ends here. Don’t cry. You both gave me immense love. I couldn’t fulfil your dreams.” The 18-year-old was distressed over her

performance in JEE.

In 2010, a study revealed that India’s suicide rate was higher than the world average, with the most number of cases in the 15-29 age group. Cut to 2024, and another report highlighted the sharp increase in suicide rates in the young population.

Over the last two decades, student suicides have increased by about 4 per cent per annum on an average. In the last 10 years, the rate has risen to 7 per cent. We have to keep in mind that stigma and legal constraints lead to the under-reporting of suicides; in all likelihood making these statistics much lower than the actual figures.

Death by suicide is not a problem that can be addressed by a list of neatly drawn-up tips. It is not something that has just sprung up. From hushed conversations to loud outcries — all are short-lived noises that attempt to assign blame. And then we all move on. The fact is that each year, we lose more young people to suicide than the rest of the world.

We are quick to scan an article for probable causes and then let out a sigh of relief masked by shock and fleeting grief — that it isn’t us. What we fail to see is that a suicide case is not just a failure of life to thrive, it is a failure of a society to help a life flourish. We are all in it together. So, when a life is snuffed out like this, it should not end with merely labelling it as an outcome of parental pressure, academic failure, a failed relationship, or a reaction to bullying. It is a collective societal failure.

Ambika Singh, psychoanalytic psychotherapist at Family Tree, and author of ‘Interruptions in Identity: Engaging with Suicidality Among the Indian Youth’, points out that every time an incident gets reported, we are jolted by the facts and figures, only for the headlines to be replaced soon after. “We are living in a world that is not very connected. Suicidality and self-harm are a relational problem. Unless we address that at a deeper level, we will be just repeating the cycle,” she adds.

A conversation with university students revealed that although many institutions have support systems in place on paper, they are often ill-equipped to handle the issues faced by the youth. A worrying, and rarely discussed, issue is the rise in substance use, including medicinal abuse alongside substances like alcohol, marijuana, etc. “I have seen so many friends resort to substances to get over mental health issues and I don’t know if it’s because they couldn’t talk about these issues, or because nobody was listening,” says a fourth-year student at a leading university. “The most common reason is not having anyone to turn to. The fear of being judged or harassed if we talked about what we are going through. The fear that no one will understand what we are going through,” says a second-year student in Delhi.

Social media has further complicated the situation, with relationships now moving online, reducing opportunities for real-world communication. Young minds also run the risk of falling in the loop of feeling vastly inadequate in comparison to the perfect lives portrayed in 30-second reels being pushed by social media platforms.

The bottom line is that our children are struggling. We have been window-dressing the problems with half-hearted policy changes, protecting them from failures or simply looking the other way in the name of it being a ‘teenage phase’. There could be a million reasons for someone to take the extreme step — from being bullied for their caste or skin colour, to academic pressure or severe mental health struggles. Every life that ends has a different story. However, the common thread is the absence of helping hands along the way. From schools to colleges on the academic front, and from families to friends on the personal front — every child needs at least one adult that they can turn to, talk to, confide in. This is much more complex than it seems. It takes a village to raise a child. Children can develop the emotional skills required to navigate crises if they have trustworthy, non-judgemental adults who listen to them and support them through their formative years. It could be a teacher, a parent or friends they rely on as adults. However, as a parent, listening should not to be confused with permissiveness or being a friend to the child.

A child needs the parent to do just what their role entails — to be a parent, not a friend. A friendly approach is vastly different from an attempt to become a child’s buddy. So, while consistent discipline needs to be in place, the approach should be inclusive. Having said that, building discipline doesn’t take away the need for a parent to truly listen and try to understand the world as the children see it.

We cannot understand what young people are going through if we view their problems through a generational lens that no longer fits. We need to remove those outdated filters, hold their hands and give them the space to express themselves. There will be times when we fail to understand, but that does not mean we give up or belittle the issues that seem insurmountable to them. It simply means that we must relentlessly seek and create resources to help them — whether in the form of a community, a therapist, or both.

The headlines will fade, but the pain of a life lost will haunt those families forever. Yet, the issue will not resolve itself until we, as a society, take responsibility. Talk to your child, your students — listen as you would like to be heard. See them. Understand them. Be empathetic if you want the same from them. Our young ones are reflecting pain, loneliness and helplessness. If we don’t step up now, we will remain nothing more than mute spectators to a steadily rising graph.

— The writer is an author and professor of psychology