With the announcement of the Plus Two results on Friday, helplines in the city were flooded with calls from students and parents. But counsellors saw a different pattern — many of the callers were worried about entrance examinations and getting admitted to the courses of their choice.
At 104, the State Health Department’s round-the-clock helpline, counsellors handled 3,500 calls from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on the day of the results. The top queries were on fear and anxiety, stress management, depression and re-evaluation.
“We provided exclusive counselling for students on how to face exam results. We received several calls seeking career counselling and help for depression. In the last two years, the pattern was that we got calls regarding failures in examinations. Today, there were many calls from students who expected high marks but scored less. They were worried about securing admission in medicine or engineering, and parental pressure,” said C. Sivagurunathan, head of project, 104 health helpline.
Exploring options
Counsellors at the helpline, on assessing the state of mind of the callers, told them about the numerous options available for higher education. “We spoke to them about new courses and courses that are the next best option to medicine, such as allied health sciences,” he added.
Lakshmi Vijayakumar, psychiatrist and founder of Sneha, a suicide prevention centre, also noticed a similar trend.
“What we observed is that callers were worried about the entrance examinations. At least 60% of the callers were youngsters, and many were worried about clearing the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test. They passed the board examinations but were anxious if they would get [admission to courses on] medicine. We asked them to look at what they have achieved and feel positive,” she said.
Dr. Vijayakumar, who has been tracking exam failure-related suicides in the State, said there was a definitive decrease in the number of such suicides in Tamil Nadu.
Suicide figures
“During 2003-2004, there were more than 40 exam failure suicides in Chennai, and 450 in Tamil Nadu. In 2015, there were seven exam failure suicides in the city and 322 across the State. While the number of students appearing for board exams has increased, the number of exam failure suicides has come down. But we need to do a lot of work in rural areas,” she said.
Dr. Sivagurunathan said they were picking up cases of suicide attempts from the database of the 108 ambulance network and contacting the families to provide support.
