Suicides, and mental distress and illness that often lead to them, have been a bane across different population segments in India. While every life thus lost is a cause for concern, the sense of untimely tragedy is compounded when bright young students resort to the extreme step. Today, educational institutions are increasingly marked by competitive pressures and financial and other demands that put a burden which some students are just not able to bear. The decision of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to deploy a Task Force to look into cases of suicide in Central-funded higher technical institutions was well-founded in the context of 12 such incidents over 2010- 2011. The panel has now made its recommendations, essentially on predictable lines. These include a dedicated system of counselling involving faculty members, students, parents and mental health professionals to cater to the needs of students; a visible entity for the service with parity in the institution’s organisational structure, and a proactive and enabling environment for students with psychological needs. The panel has rightly sought better awareness and sensitivity towards issues of social justice including gender, class and caste.
However, this exercise needs to be scaled up to cover the entire spectrum of educational institutions in the country in order to address the underlying issues in a more meaningful and egalitarian manner. According to data for 2011, the number of suicidal deaths country-wide among students was 7,696. In 2010 the total was 7,379. The figures have consistently risen over recent years. According to one study published by Lancet, suicides have become the second leading cause of death among young adults in India, after road accidents for men and maternity-related complications for women. That study also indicated that in India, suicides have become more common among educated and young adults — in contrast to patterns observed in many developed societies. We need to pause and reflect: what is happening to our young people? An all-out effort should be launched to reach out to youths in distress, enabling close cooperation and collaboration between counselling services and the health services. As a part of this exercise, India should find ways to address its shortage of mental health professionals. Counselling processes should assist students who have social, academic, linguistic, financial, physical and other difficulties. More preventive and promotional mental wellness activities, as also sensitisation and awareness programmes, need to be put in place.
Keywords: India suicide cases, Indian youth, student issues, student suicide cases, technical institutions, mental health
moral education needs to be included in curriculum. character building is necessary.
if money is lost, nothing is lost
if character is lost, then everything is lost
Actually this problem starts from our education system and mentality of our society.Our education system and society both push every child to perform better in studies even if he/she is not interested.They never allow a human being to be himself and let him do what he is interested in.
Everyone want their children to be amongst the toppers in studies and even if they don't want it, they push their children to perform better out of the fear that what society will think of their children.
Because in our society,now also in 21st century, at most of the places,doing anything apart from studies is treated as a wasting a time.So this will continue to happen untill our education system gets some revolutionary changes, on the other side parents too change their mentality.
It seems unreasonable to assume that non-meritorious students get
through IIT entrances (assumed to test intellect), whereas additional
emphasis needs to be allocated to 'marks' acquired through a system of
blind rot (processed to work best for crammers)! Well, idiosyncrasies
do exist in interpretation of facts. But the bigger issue is addressing
the suicidal issue and not bisecting it for unproductive
preoccupations. At this point when societal pressures loom large on the
emaciated shoulder of a student, stress takes its toll. Counselling
sessions are an imperative, nevertheless they are seldom arranged. We
need to applaud this step on the part of the HRD Ministry, who has
considered to resolve this issue(perhaps driven by the exponentially
escalating statistics).
I am glad that The Hindu published an article that includes future of
India. As a student, I found out,all students cope with the same sullen
situations sometimes. We may have adopted foreign syllabus and pattern
in our education system but, we have not adopted the facilities which
are provided to students there in foreign countries in order to combat
mental distress and other problems. I hope these problems would be taken
care of by our education ministry in future.
The traditional saying that childhood is the best time of our life has
proved to be a misnomer with the steadfast increase in the number of
student suicides in the country.The main factors that lead to this are
peer and parental pressure,inability to cope up with difficult
situations,depression etc.They think of suicide as the only means of
salvation and emancipation of these issues.Both the government and
different NGOs have to take bold initiatives towards reducing the number
of child suicides in India.
Its true that sucide is favourable weapon in the hands of our young population to get rid off the struggle of the life.This weapon is mostly exercised by educated young students of our premier institutions.Counselling may be helpful to some extent but what is required is to transform our edcation system to meet today's requirement. As a medical student i have seen that all students getting admission to this institutions are intelligent but who conquer over this education system can only survive.
In the editorial (" That study also indicated that in India, suicides have
become more common among educated and young adults ") truly is an eye opener
to think twice before we act.When the youth who are so highly educated in
premier institutes are taking the path of suicide,don't we get a doubt, that
they are not completely equipped with the value of this precious life on this
heavenly Earth?? A complete western imbibed education right from 3 years
of age cannot solve the problem and it is the time we need to educate the youth
with religious scriptures and traditions that really explains the true value
for their life on the Earth. It is not the ultra-competitiveness,ultra-individuality, commodifying every thing in the society and nature and quick buck mentality that can take us forward.The life has something more to do and contribute to the fellow beings.So,It is not the business minded basic education that can
change, but it is the "moral and ethical education" that can help a lot for today's youth and tomorrows nation-builders.
When students who are not qualified sufficiently or have not scored high enough marks are admitted to institutions such as IIT (where majority of the students are very brilliant) they are unable to match the performance of their colleagues. They then feel depressed and attempt suicides. It is therefore necessary that only students with adequate merit who can successfully clear the courses in IITs be admitted in the first instance. It is much worse to admit students with inadequate capability since that leads to loss of life itself. Hence present reservation system for students needs to be revisited.
In India, much emphasis is being laid on suicide commited by farmers as compared to suicide committed by students. While in rural areas, farmer suicide is the major cause of death, in urban areas suicide committed by the students is the second major cause of death among youths, the first being road accidents. Thus, both these causes need proper attention of the Government. The shortage of mental health professionals does not seem to be an appropriate reason behind students commiting suicide, the main problem is how to locate a student who is distressed among other studets since a person who is about to commit suicide never discloses about this to anybody else. Instead of making efforts to locate such students we should set up regular councelling camps where such students could themselves go out and may discuss their problem relating to social, academic, financial or physical difficulties. This may prevent some of the students from commiting suicide and thus inturn lighten the figures.
After a decade or so in which psychopharmaceuticals have suffered a tremendous loss of credibility in the eyes of the western public and are steadily losing ground to a new generation of meaning-based therapies, the time is right for the psychopharmaceutical industry, like the tobacco and other industries that have been disgraced in the eyes of the highly informed publics of the west, to look eastward to more credulous markets. Let the Hindu be on guard against being innocently drafted into this misinformation campaign.
in india two class are committing suicide. the first one is student class and the second one is farmer class.the later are doing for the financial reason but the students are committing for various reason.some of the reason are high expectation from the parents , unable to cope with the academic syllabus of the course, cut throat competition among them and unable to maintain the mental equilibrium due to emotional and academic stress.
the foremost reason is that they are pushed into the courses irrespective of their interest.the person has to follow or carry out their father profession like engineer son has to become engineer doctor son has to become doctor etc. this is the root cause which i think bringing students closer to suicide because if you are pushed into the thing which you are least interested or not interested it would be very difficult for anybody to complete that assignment and thus lead to suicide
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