Two girls. Two very different family stories. A common struggle with mental health.
One came from a close-knit, loving family with present parents and a supportive home. Yet she attempted suicide because she could not come to terms with the way she looked, particularly the colour of her skin. A warm home could not protect her from the messages she absorbed about beauty, fairness, and self-worth.
Another girl quietly sought therapy without telling her parents. She came from a dysfunctional family and needed help managing the emotional fallout.
A loving family doesn't make a child immune to distress, just as a difficult one doesn't mean a child is destined to struggle. Children carry pressures from peers, social media, appearance standards, academic expectations, relationships, and the world around them—often in ways adults may not see.
“And sometimes, the most important thing we can do as parents is not assume that because a child looks happy, has a good home, or is doing well in school, everything must be fine. Mental health needs the same attention we give physical health—not only during a crisis, but long before it,” says Dr Mimansa Singh Tanwar, Clinical Psychologist, Head, Fortis School National Mental Health Program, Adayu, and Fortis Healthcare.
Dr Jitendra Nagpal, Director, Psychiatry and Mental Health Services at Moolchand Medicity, says no single warning sign exists. “Children react differently, and there is no one sign that shows a child is struggling,” he says. A student may stop sleeping before an examination, struggle to concentrate, avoid friends, or feel constantly left behind. Another may look fine in class while struggling with thoughts of self-harm.
The scale of the problem is now forcing India to look beyond the idea that students need to “cope better”.
The Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force on the mental health of students and prevention of suicides in higher education has been examining the problem across the country. It has surveyed more than 12.8 lakh students, along with parents, faculty, and mental-health professionals, and identified academic pressure, discrimination, financial stress, social exclusion, and stigma as issues requiring attention.
The problem starts earlier than we think
“A lot of what we see in teenagers and young adults actually starts much earlier in life,” says child mental-health professional Neha Bafna, Psychology Counselor and founder of TARA. “We tend to focus on adolescence, but the foundations are often laid during childhood.”
That makes student mental health about more than examinations. It is also about connection, emotional safety, sleep, digital life, family relationships, and whether children have someone to turn to.
Dr Nagpal describes mental health as inseparable from everyday life. “Mental health is inevitable; part of everyday’s breathing, walking, talking, sharing, listening, responding,” she says.
For many Indian students, pressure begins in school, where marks can determine access to the next stage of education, and competitive examinations add another layer. A 2025 Indian study of 218 students aged 15–18 found that more than one-third reported high academic stress, while nine in 10 reported moderate-to-high stress. Published in Acta Psychologica, the study found that fear of failure and uncertainty about the future were key stressors.
When stress becomes something more
Examinations, changing schools, friendships and an uncertain future can all produce anxiety. The concern is when distress becomes persistent or overwhelming, when a young person can’t sleep or concentrate, stops enjoying normal activities, withdraws or feels unable to cope.
A 2025 study of 679 school-going adolescents in South Delhi found symptoms consistent with depression in 25.92% and anxiety in 13.70%. Published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Public Care, the study was conducted in selected schools and is not a national prevalence estimate, but it illustrates the extent of distress in a school population.
Academic pressure does not explain every condition. “Academic pressure has always existed. Mental health conditions existed before too, but they went unnoticed, untreated, and undiagnosed, and only showed their impact in adulthood,” says Dr. Mimansa Singh. Greater awareness, she says, can make the problem appear newer than it is.
The problem does not end at college
College can bring freedom but also isolation. Students may move away from home, struggle financially, face discrimination, or feel that everyone around them is coping better.
The Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force's recent survey found that 34% of higher-education students felt like outsiders on campus and 9% reported suicidal thoughts.
A student may have good classrooms, laboratories, and hostels but still feel they have nobody they can safely turn to.
Digital life adds another layer
Social media can provide connection and peer support, but also constant comparison, cyberbullying, appearance pressures, and sleep disruption. WHO/Europe’s 2025 policy work on the digital determinants of youth mental health noted that digital environments, including social media and AI-driven platforms, are increasingly influencing young people’s mental health.
So “screen time” is too simplistic. The questions are whether screens interfere with sleep, replace exercise and play, affect self-esteem, or become a child's main way of regulating difficult emotions.
Bafna has noticed more behavioural changes linked to online gaming, social media and YouTube, including reduced attention span, irritability and aggression. “Children increasingly want everything immediately. There is very little space for waiting or delayed gratification; instant gratification has become the norm.”
Children don’t always say, “I’m struggling”
A teenager may say “I don’t want to go to school,” “I can’t study,” or “Everyone else is better than me.” Or say nothing.
Parents may instead notice withdrawal, changes in sleep or eating, persistent irritability or sadness, declining grades, unexplained headaches or stomach aches, loss of confidence or increasingly negative talk. One sign does not mean a disorder, but a persistent pattern of change deserves attention.
Sometimes behaviour is the child’s language
Bafna believes adults often respond to behaviour rather than the emotion underneath it. A child may shout, and the adult replies: “What is wrong with you?”
She suggests instead: “You’re not feeling okay right now. I can sense it. How can I help you?”
“Children need to feel safe enough to communicate what is happening to them,” she says. An adult’s job isn't to accept harmful behaviour, but to understand what may lie beneath it.
The connection children need
Bafna sees real connection as increasingly missing from children’s lives. “There can be many other factors depending on the individual child. Mental health is very subjective. But in general, the lack of real connection can be one of the core issues,” she says.
Dr Nagpal argues that emotional intelligence helps people cope with setbacks, but resilience does not mean protecting children from failure. “We need to optimise the fact that failure, hardship, and setbacks are an inevitable part of growing,” he says. The goal is to ensure children do not face difficulties alone.
Bafna describes a familiar scene: everyone at the dinner table, phones nearby, a notification arrives. “Even if it is subtle, we are distracted.”
Parents may also be physically present but mentally occupied. “Children look to the adults in their lives as their reference point,” she says. “Social learning begins at home.” For young children, the attraction of a screen may not be about the screen at all. “What they are actually looking for is connection.”
Dr Nagpal suggests families periodically conduct a psychosocial and emotional “audit”: Are we talking? Do we listen? Does my child feel safe telling me something uncomfortable? Do we spend time together without devices? When my child is upset, do I react to the behaviour or try to understand the emotion?
A four-year-old who could not talk about abuse
Bafna recalls a four-year-old girl who had “experienced inappropriate behaviour” from a boy and carried the experience for around six months without telling her parents. Her parents did many things for her, but she could feel a deeper lack of connection during therapy.
The child eventually began talking; she described the boy as a “monster”. “ Through therapy, she developed a sense of her own strength and learned that unsafe behaviour could be spoken about,” she says.
“The family also learned that keeping a child safe is not only about providing things or a physically secure environment. It is also about emotional safety, allowing a child to say,” she adds.
“Nobody is to be blamed,” Bafna says. “They did what they thought was best with the knowledge they had at the time.”
Schools need to become part of the safety net
Parents cannot carry this alone. Teachers see children outside the family and may notice changes earlier. Nagpal describes them as “the sentinels” and “the guardians of mental health as a first aider”. “The first gatekeeper, the gatekeeper of mental health, will always continue to be the teacher, the faculty in the university,” he says.
Teachers should not diagnose depression or anxiety. They should notice changes, listen without judgment, and connect students with appropriate support.
Dr Mimansa believes schools need stronger systems around bullying, media literacy, mental-health education and teacher training. “If you can go to a nurse and say, ‘I have a headache,’ you should be able to go to a counsellor and say, ‘I am not feeling okay today,’” she says.
A 2026 meta-analysis of 13 studies involving 3,011 adolescents found a small but statistically significant improvement in subjective wellbeing from interventions including social-emotional learning, mindfulness, positive psychology, compassion-based approaches and structured physical activity.
What are we asking children to be resilient to?
We often tell children to cope better, manage stress and become more resilient. But perhaps we should ask another question: what are we asking them to be resilient to?
“Academic pressure, disappointment, failure, and uncertainty cannot disappear. But children can have secure relationships, emotional skills, supportive adults, and places where asking for help isn't a sign of weakness,” says Dr Nagpal.
"Children grow up in a vulnerable, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Children should be prepared to navigate it," he added.
That preparation begins when a child learns that they can talk about their feelings. When a parent puts down the phone and listens. When a teacher notices that the child who was once engaged has gone quiet. When a school treats mental health as part of education.
Raising a mentally healthy child is not about preventing every struggle. It is about making sure that when struggle comes, the child doesn't have to face it alone.