Human touch vital
THE recent suicide of a student at IIT-Ropar sent shock waves. Yet another young life snuffed out due to suicide creates despair. India has the highest rates of suicide among people aged 15 to 29 years. As our human resource of the future opts out, the demographic dividend is frittered away.
People under 25 years constitute 53 per cent of India’s population. In 2020, a student committed suicide every 42 minutes, according to the National Crime Record Bureau. Over 2013-22, as many as 1,03,961 student suicides were recorded — a 64 per cent rise compared to the prior decade.
Potential triggers for student suicides range from background or family issues, academic stress, mental health problems, substance abuse and relationship crises to grappling with feelings of rejection and “not fitting in", cyber suicides and the masking of a different sexual orientation.
Dr Simmi Waraich, a psychiatrist, says there is a physiological reason too. The prefrontal cortex, responsible for rational thinking, and its ventromedial areas that control emotion and instinctual behaviours mature later in teens, making them more reactive, impulsive and sensation-seeking. Therefore, family support and institutional mechanisms to help students cope with various stressors are imperative.
Parents do what they think is best and mechanisms exist on paper in educational institutions. How this translates into a lifeline for a helpless youngster grappling with the futility of being alive is another matter.
Parenting youngsters in times of social media is a daunting task. Clueless about the anxieties of their wards, parents inhabit a world as much a silo as the child’s. The parenting template has not been upgraded to meet the drastically altered social reality. The Indian family functions more on the premise of curbs and control than empathy. This erodes the youngster’s confidence and decision-making capacity.
Often, students internalising the duty-over-desire paradigm also take the burden of bailing out the family from unfavourable circumstances. This is especially true of students from remote areas who gain admission to IITs through affirmative action. Unable to deal with the pressure of academic schedules, the backlog often leads to spiralling anxiety. They cannot go back as they fail to keep pace. Being out of sync in unfamiliar/hostile terrain acts as a force multiplier for stress.
Emile Durkheim, French sociologist known for Le Suicide (1897), focussed on integration and regulation impacting suicides. Regulation signifies norms and laws. Integration is interaction with others and role in communities. Both must be in balance. However, we are witnessing the breakdown of family and community life. Add to this migration from rural to urban centres, where anonymity makes the collapse of values more visible. As cushions vanish, we are yet to evolve newer mechanisms to replace the societal flux.
Strangely, the same rapid-splice social media images that dominate student lives also isolate them. Tech also creates walls that imprison a youth in distress. No one notices or connects. Everyone is in their own bubble. Innumerable Facebook friends and thousands of Instagram likes freeze when a lonely student drowns in emotions.
We need teachers who impart life skills and mentor young lives. We need parents who try to figure out their child’s world and have uncomfortable conversations with them rather than judge. Sometimes all it takes is someone to accompany a student to a therapist. AI might rule, but human presence triumphs. What students struggling to remain afloat need is a human presence, a hug, a heart ready to listen and love.
Aruti Nayar is a freelance journalist.
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