A Supreme Court-appointed panel examining student suicides has revealed that about 9 per cent of students reported experiencing suicidal thoughts, while about 15 per cent of students in higher education institutions experienced a period in the previous six months when they felt overwhelmed or distressed.

News agency PTI stated that the report is expected to be part of the final report of the National Task Force (NTF) to be submitted by October 31. The report seeks to address mental health concerns of students and prevent suicides in higher educational institutions (HEIs).

In an interim report submitted this year, the panel had emphasised that the experience of students in HEIs has been found to be marked by "deep-rooted social discrimination, rampant sexual harassment in medical and engineering colleges; gender discrimination by faculty in medical, law and state universities, in terms of academic support, hostel curfews and moral policing; caste identification by NEET-UG and JEE ranks; caste-based humiliation and discrimination in terms of admission, grading, language gaps and faculty attention".

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The NTF survey was conducted with responses from over 2.43 lakh students. 67 per cent of these students belonged to the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backwards Classes categories.

About 34 per cent of the surveyed students reported feeling like an outsider on campus to varying extent. "About 15 per cent of students recalled a period in the previous six months when they felt very overwhelmed or distressed, or experienced low moods or anxiety continuously for several weeks. Nine per cent reported experiencing suicidal thoughts often or very often in the past year," the report stated.

Meanwhile, over half of the surveyed students expressed trust in the administration to handle the issues fairly.

"Fifty-six per cent of students indicated having trust in the administration to handle serious issues fairly while roughly 32 per cent said their institute did not offer counselling services," the survey found.

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Recommendations

The official underscored that emerging patterns in the survey suggest urgent action for standardised student support systems, implementation of measures such as faculty training, stigma-reduction, crisis SOPs, regular monitoring with quality data, and building responsive and transparent administration for addressing student mental health.

(With PTI Inputs)