It is most unfortunate that three students committed suicide between Saturday and Sunday and didn’t give life a chance. Though the police have cited the pressure to perform well in studies as the main motivating factor in the cases of an 11-year-old participant of reality shows Neha Sawant and an 18-year-old medical student, the reason for class VII student Shushant Patil’s suicide on Monday is still unknown.
It would be dangerous to look for a connection here or to forecast a doom and gloom scenario — we are not saying that suicides in India has taken on an epidemic form, as it has in some Scandinavian and European countries. But these three incidents and quite a few in the recent past point to a growing phenomenon — depression.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) by the year 2020, depression is projected to reach the second place of the ranking of global burden of diseases for all ages and both sexes. Today, depression is already the second major disease in the age group of 15 to 44 for both sexes combined. India, clearly, is not immune.
Our changing lifestyles, our yardsticks of success, growing consumerism and the increased pressure to perform at all levels appear to have taken some toll on our minds. While there is danger in looking at the past as some kind of a “golden age” since humans have always strived and struggled and we have many more advantages today than we did in the past, it is also true that contemporary life demand a price from us.
A growing intolerance and sense of isolation is reflected in our behaviour towards our friends, parents, colleagues, neighbours, peers and children. For many, the change from a joint family to a nuclear family system has added new pressure points and discarded old stress-relievers.
Mental health problems are no less important than the diseases that get maximum attention from the health ministry— namely AIDS, cancer and heart ailments. In the coming decades, the world will look to India for its huge population of young people.
It is in the youth that we see the future of India while in the senior citizens we find wisdom of taking on the challenges of the world. We cannot afford to lose them in this battle against depression. It is time India joins the fight and makes a difference.
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