The Ministry of Education has rolled out a comprehensive set of measures to address the rising number of student suicides in India. The programme combines data‑driven monitoring, counseling services, helplines and institutional guidelines across schools, colleges and universities.
Key Developments
- National data on student suicides are compiled by the NCRB in its yearly Accidental Death & Suicide in India (ADSI) reports.
- The Ministry’s MANODARPAN programme provides a toll‑free helpline, live sessions ‘Sahyog’ and webinars ‘Paricharcha’, streamed on PM e‑Vidya and the NCERT YouTube channel.
- CBSE mandates a counsellor and a wellness teacher in every secondary and senior secondary school; Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti (NVS) engages two counsellors per Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, reaching 830 counsellors by Feb 2026.
- The UGC issued the National Suicide Prevention Strategy to HEIs (Jan 2023) and guidelines on physical fitness, stress management and anti‑ragging (Apr 2023). It also runs a multilingual anti‑ragging outreach on social media.
- In July 2023 the Ministry circulated a framework on emotional and mental well‑being for Higher Education Institutes, urging SOPs for early distress identification and suicide prevention.
- Guidelines for Coaching Centres (Jan 2024) now require counseling facilities, transparent fees and bans on batch segregation to curb academic pressure.
- Institutes such as IIT Kharagpur have adopted the SETU framework; all IITs, IIMs, NITs and IIITs have dedicated mental‑health centres staffed by professionals.
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