According to a recent World Health Organization report, India has the highest suicide

rate in the world for the 15-to-29 age group. It stands at 35.5 per 100,000 people for
2012, the last year for which numbers are available.
Across all age groups, nearly 260,000 people in India killed themselves that year.

India tackles worryingly high level of

suicides among young people
By Mallika Kapur and Jethro Mullen, CNN
Updated 1215 GMT (2015 HKT) December 12, 2014

Every hour, one student commits

suicide in India
India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged 15 to 29, according to a
2012 Lancet report, which illustrated the need for urgent interventions.

Every hour, one student commits suicide in India, according to 2015 data (the
latest available) from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

In 2015, the number of student suicides stood at 8,934. In the five years
leading to 2015, 39,775 students killed themselves. The number of attempted
suicides, many unreported, is likely to be much higher.

In 2015, Maharashtra reported most student suicides of any state: 1,230 of

8,934 (14%) nationwide, followed by Tamil Nadu (955) and Chhattisgarh
(625). Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are among India’s most advanced states,
and their high rate of suicides could reflect the pressures of economic growth.
Professional help is difficult to find because India endures an 87% shortage
of mental-health professionals. The situation is exacerbated by low public
spending on mental health — India spends less than Bangladesh on mental-
health services.
Student suicides are becoming increasingly common in Kota, Rajasthan,
considered the capital of India’s shadow education system. Its many
commercial coaching centres, that guarantee success in professional entrance
exams, pressure students into striving for unrealistic goals. Unable to cope
with failure and anxious about letting their family down, a growing number
of Kota students opt to end their lives.

Every hour, one student commits

suicide in India
India has one of the world’s highest suicide rates for youth aged 15 to 29, according to a
2012 Lancet report, which illustrated the need for urgent interventions.
LIFESTYLE Updated: May 08, 2017 09:15 IST

Devanik Saha
IndiaSpend, New Delhi

Although there was no exact set of causes outlined, failure at

examinations accounted for nearly a quarter of the cases. A total of
2,403 (in the year 2014), 2,646 (2015), and 2,413 (2016) suicides were
committed due to this reason, Hansraj Gangaram Ahir, minister of
state for home affairs, wrote in response to a question submitted to the
Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament, on Jan. 02.

Fixing the crisis

Currently, there are fewer than 5,000 psychiatrists and even fewer
clinical psychologists—only 2,000—in a country of 1.3 billion. So there
is a dire need to make more resources available to India’s student
population.
India facing possible mental health epidemic, warns President

Speaking at the 22nd convocation of the National Institute of Mental Health

and Neurosciences here (NIMHANS), he called for addressing the shortage of
mental health professionals.
President Ram Nath Kovind today said India was facing a possible "mental health epidemic" and stressed the need
for providing access to treatment facilities to those suffering from mental disorders by 2022.

Read more at:

//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62308115.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_
campaign=cppst

Read more at:

//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/62308115.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_
campaign=cppst

In 2015, filmmaker Abhay Kumar made an acclaimed documentary, Placebo, about the
prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences, which exposed the rampant
depression among its students, showcasing the impact social expectations and academic
rigor played in motivating students to take the drastic step of ending their lives.
Admission to AIIMS is more competitive than those of America’s top schools like MIT
and Harvard, which have acceptance rates of 9% and 7% respectively; AIIMS has an
acceptance rate of below 0.1%.

Placebo is one of the first documentaries to explore the problem of student suicides in
India

DISTURBING TREND

Many people in India argue that caste-based discrimination lies at the root of student
suicides in India. In 2007, the Thorat Committee, which was set up to investigate
allegations of harassment against students that belong to the scheduled castes and tribes
at India’s top medical school, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), found
rampant discrimination against students, many of whom claimed that they were
segregated and asked about their caste during examinations.
 When Will India Address Its Student
Suicide Crisis?
 BY ANKITA MUKHOPADHYAY

 • FEBRUARY 25, 2019

 fair observer

https://idreamcareer.com/blog/student-suicides-educational-pressure-india

Shut coaching centres, they suck’:

Kota student’s suicide letter
Kriti Tripathi scored 144 marks in the JEE Mains 2016 results declared on April 27, which
was 44 marks higher than the 100-mark cut-off so her suicide set off speculations about the
cause.

“It’s not because of bad scores in JEE Mains. I was expecting worse. It’s
because I’ve started hating myself to the extent that I want to kill myself,”
wrote 17-year-old Kriti Tripathi in a suicide note before jumping to her
death from a five-storey building in Kota on April 28.
Kriti scored 144 marks in the JEE Mains 2016 results declared on April 27,
which was 44 marks higher than the 100-mark cut-off so her suicide set off
speculation about the cause.

In the five-page emotional suicide note addressed to a friend and family,

which is in exclusive possession of Hindustan Times, Kriti said, “I’m sorry.
All the noise in my head and the hatred in my heart, hatred for myself, is
maddening.”

“Most people around me will say that I would never kill myself and that I had
no reason. They don’t know what’s going on inside me.”

The letter reveals that she planned to commit suicide on April 22 but the
friend prevented it.

She said no one in the world knew her story. “Even all the people I know
combined don’t know the whole of my life story. I have a habit of keeping
things to myself,” she scribbled in a neat hand.

In the note, the girl has urged the government of India and human resource
development (HRD) ministry to shut coaching institutes as soon as possible.
“They suck,” she wrote.

After Reading Suicides

Notes of More Than 20
Students, DC of Kota Pens
Moving Letter to Parents
by Anandita JumdeMay 5, 2016, 2:27 pm

An unfortunate number of youngsters who are forced to take up engineering and

medicine, and pursue careers they have little interest in, are choosing to end their
promising lives by committing suicide.

I consider myself a very unfortunate person because I got a chance to read around 20-
25 Suicide Notes of Young, Brilliant, Beautiful and Wonderful Children.

Am I giving so many adjectives to such children because they committed Suicide?

I am sorry…. Answer is No… They were in fact, as I said earlier, Young, Brilliant,
Beautiful and Wonderful Children.

A Girl with an amazing command of English language in her suicide note (grammatically
perfect 5-page Suicide Note with beautiful running handwriting) thanks her mother for
giving up her career for raising the children….

Good career in the field of Engineering & Medicine, as the case may be, is more or less
like certain insurance in terms of decent earning and living standards. I sincerely think
that in most of the cases, this is the very reason that makes us dream such careers for
our children.
There is nothing wrong in thinking on a certain kind of Assured Career Insurance for
one’s child since limited resources and high degree of competition demands one to
think ahead of times.

However, I think we all agree that the World too has changed drastically in the last 15-
20 years so much so, that most of the facilities and services that were available for a
limited few are now available to many due to the huge progress in technology which
was witnessed in this period.

Art, Entertainment, Professional Sports, Literature, Health & Fitness, Entrepreneurship,

Journalism, Photography, Event management, Music, Adventure, Destination tourism,
etc, to name a few too witnessed immense growth in comparison to the bygone era.

https://www.thebetterindia.com/54484/student-suicide-iit-jee-kota/

Is discrimination in higher education in India a real problem?

There is a notion that our educational institutions are caste neutral. However, if we care to delve
deeper, casteism comes across as an attitude problem, either from department heads or from
authorities who represent these institutions. Usually the determinants of caste, religion or region
are read through language, lack of or command over English, submissiveness , articulation,
regional or urban nature, mode of dress, complexion. While most students overlook the bigotry
of individuals, others are driven to the edge in the face of systemic ridicule. In only the last
decade, ten suicide cases have come to light from Hyderabad University alone.

The former chairman of the Press Council of India, Markandey Katju, notes on his Facebook
wall, "Most non-Dalits look down on them as sub humans, and often taunt, humiliate and
victimize them. This is a national disgrace. Unless this feudal mindset is destroyed our country
cannot progress.”
Suicides in Navodaya schools: 49 in 5 years, half of them Dalit and tribal students
Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas face serious challenge: 11 students kill themselves in
Class 11, 15 in Class 12.

*The causes of suicides in JNVs are disparate and range from unrequited
love, family problems, corporal punishment or humiliation by teachers,
academic pressure, depression, and fight between friends. Of these, the first
three are cited most often as reasons behind suicides.
There are no trained counsellors on campus, and it’s largely left to
“overburdened” teachers to look after the welfare of students. And yet, it’s the
teachers and staff who have ended up facing the flak for the 49 student
suicides reported over the last five years from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas
(JNVs).
Navodaya school suicides: Rs 56 crore passed
to hire counsellors in every school.