India’s youth suicide epidemic reflects a crisis of silence, fear and a lack of support systems

Keeping young people safe from suicide isn’t about more locked terraces, barred windows or cellphone bans. It isn’t about turning schools and universities into fortresses. Safety, for young people, comes from something far more ordinary and human – being listened to when they say they’re struggling. Being checked in on. Having teachers who notice when something might be off. Knowing that if they are bullied or harassed, someone will intervene and stand with them, not against them. Knowing that when they struggle, there are people and places they can genuinely turn to for help.

I am reminded of this every day in my work with Sangath, a community mental health research organisation. Here, young people regularly tell us, sometimes for the first time ever, that they feel unheard, dismissed, or reduced to their marks. I still remember pausing a student workshop last year when Class 12 board exam results were announced, helping students check their marks online and supporting one who felt too afraid to go home and tell his parents.

We hear the same stories over and over again: “No one at home believed me; they told me to snap out of it.” “I didn’t want to trouble my parents.” “I kept asking for...

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