With the suicide tendency showing a spurt among the youth, especially school students, the Supreme Court has asked the Centre to consider framing a law or guidelines for schools to detect early suicidal signs among children in order to arrest the trend.
Given the fact that 33 per cent suicides reported in 2015 related to the youth, the court requested the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development to consider a public interest litigation filed by one Kamlesh Haribhai Parekh, a practicing doctor from Gujarat, highlighting the need for such a law.
The Bench of Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justice DY Chandrachud forwarded the PIl as a representation to the Centre and said, “The Department of School Education and literacy, MHRD shall take such action thereon, as it considers reasonable, in the facts and circumstances of the case.”
The petition filed by advocate Haresh Raichura on behalf his client cited laws passed by developed nations to curb the rising trend of suicides among the youth.
India is home to the largest adolescent population in the world.
According to Youth in India 2017, a report prepared by the Ministry of Statistics, India has 242 million population aged between 10 and 24 years, which is far beyond China’s tally of 185 million young people.
The report said as many as 8,908 suicide cases were registered among children aged below 18 years in 2015. Family problems and failure in examination led to 3,500 cases of suicide, followed by illness, love affairs, etc. In close to 1,280 cases, the reasons were unknown.
The National Mental Health Survey 2015-16 pointed out that prevalence of mental disorders and depression is more in urban metros as compared to rural areas. “Early recognition and intervention will help to realise favourable outcomes,” the survey said, identifying a wide range of mental health conditions among children such as depression, anxiety, tobacco, alcohol, suicidal ideation that required urgent intervention.
The Journal of Indian Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health in its October 2016 issue identified roadblocks in addressing symptoms of stress among school children and they included “stringent school timings, lack of awareness about adolescent mental health, untrained professionals at schools to deal with peer pressure, and lack of consent of parents to address mental health issues”.
The report said when early symptoms go unchecked it leads to depression, anxiety, emotional outbursts, high risk behaviour, school dropouts, running away from home and suicidal ideations. The same factors also lead to high rate of suicides among adolescents aged 14-16 years.
India invests roughly 0.06 per cent of its health budget on mental health and faces 87 per cent shortage of mental health professionals. Experts believe that by introducing stress coping skills and health education programmes in schools, a positive start can be made in this direction.