The Supreme Court has said the continued loss of young lives by way of suicides reflected “a systemic failure” and said the issue “cannot be ignored”.
A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta, which passed a slew of pan-India guidelines to deal with the issue, said the National Crime Records Bureau statistics published in 2022 titled Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India painted a “deeply distressing picture”.
According to PTI, SC while observing said : “The continued loss of young lives, often due to preventable causes rooted in unattended psychological distress, academic overburden, social stigma, and institutional insensitivity, reflects a systemic failure that cannot be ignored,” it said.
India recorded 1,70,924 reported suicide cases in 2022, of which 7.6 percent, approximately 13,044, were student suicides.
The bench said notably, 2,248 of these deaths were attributed directly to failure in examinations.
The NCRB data further reflected the suicides among students in the last two decades increasing from 5,425 in 2001 to 13,044 in 2022.
“Considering….situation of an increasing number of suicides in educational institutions, inter alia, including schools, coaching institutes, colleges, and training centres, we feel obliged to acknowledge and address the gravity of the mental health crisis afflicting students in educational institutions across the country,” the bench said.
