How can we make it easier for our children?
The answer is not another motivational lecture telling children to work harder, think positively or become more resilient.
Nor should every student who is stressed be immediately labelled as having a mental disorder. Stress, sadness, disappointment and anxiety are part of growing up. The concern arises when these feelings become persistent or severe, or begin interfering with a child's sleep, learning, relationships, daily functioning or safety.
The bigger question, then, is not simply how we can make children more resilient. It is also what we are asking them to be resilient to — and whether the adults and systems around them are doing enough to make life easier.
We spoke to experts for a guide to help our children navigate modern life.
Dr Jitendra Nagpal, senior psychiatrist and Programme Director at Expressions India, argues that mental health has to be understood as part of everyday life rather than something that enters the conversation only when a child is in crisis.
“Mental health is inevitable, integral—I would rather say an inclusive part of everyday breathing, walking, talking, sharing, listening, responding, writing an exam, playing in the ground... It is the most non-negotiable part of growing up.”
"Half of all mental health conditions begin by the age of 14, and post-pandemic, anxiety and depression have gone up by 25%.
That means support has to begin long before a crisis," says Dr Mimansa Singh Tanwar, Clinical Psychologist and Head, Fortis Mental Health.
1. Make mental-health support part of the education system
Mental health cannot depend on whether a particular school or college happens to have a good counsellor.
WHO guidance for the education sector recommends creating safe and inclusive learning environments, integrating mental-health promotion into education and providing psychosocial support for students and staff.
India's National Task Force on student mental health is also examining measures including periodic wellbeing assessments, campus mental-health services and faculty sensitisation and training.
The goal should be a system in which a student can be identified early — before distress becomes a crisis.
Dr Nagpal believes this requires moving mental-health support closer to where children actually spend their time.
“We need to decentralise the services in the school and the university system so that the ecosystem of the school—with the leadership of the student and training of entire pedagogy, the teachers, with involving the volunteer families and the parents as sentinels for well-being—will be the major step forward in terms of capacity building.”
2. Train teachers to notice changes
Teachers are not psychiatrists and should not be expected to diagnose students.
But they can notice changes: a previously engaged student becoming withdrawn, repeated absences, a sudden deterioration in performance, extreme anxiety or a student repeatedly saying that they cannot cope.
They need to know what to notice, what to say, what not to say and where to refer a student.
“Teachers are the sentinels. They are the guardians of mental health as a first aider,” says Dr Nagpal. “The first gatekeeper, the gatekeeper of mental health, will always continue to be the teacher, the faculty in the university.”
Dr Mimansa, who works in child and adolescent mental health, similarly believes schools need to make mental-health education part of the curriculum, alongside stress management, coping and life skills. Teachers, she says, should also be trained in psychological first aid.
3. Give children somewhere to go before a crisis
Counselling should not be something students access only after they are suicidal.
There should be several levels of support — from peer support and trained school counsellors to psychologists and, when necessary, psychiatrists and specialist care.
But the system will work only if children trust it.
“Children think, ‘If I seek help, what will people think? Will they feel I am weak?’” says Dr Mimansa. “Even in schools, students avoid counsellors because peers will judge them.”
She suggests changing how people view help-seeking. “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.’”
Confidentiality matters too. If students believe that asking for help will automatically result in information being passed to parents, teachers or administrators, many may avoid the system.
4. Stop treating academic pressure as an individual weakness
Schools and colleges also need to examine the environment itself.
That means looking at examination schedules, unreasonable workloads, teaching practices, attendance policies, hostel life, faculty behaviour, bullying, ragging and grievance mechanisms.
Academic pressure is not new, Dr Mimansa points out. What has changed is that schools and families are becoming more aware of mental-health problems that may previously have gone unnoticed.
Dr Nagpal makes another important distinction: helping children cope does not mean teaching them that every setback is something they should overcome.
“Emotional intelligence cannot be divorced from cognitive intelligence, because that sustains you through life. What I'm trying to say is success with stability and sustainability with the ability to be resilient.”
Children need to learn that failure and disappointment are part of life — but they also need adults and institutions that do not unnecessarily magnify those pressures.
A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis found a small but statistically significant improvement in adolescent wellbeing from school-based interventions including social-emotional learning, positive psychology, mindfulness, compassion-based approaches and structured physical activity.
The message is encouraging, but wellbeing programs cannot replace fixing environments that contribute to distress.
5. Teach coping skills — but don't make children responsible for everything
Students can benefit from learning to recognize stress and anxiety, regulate emotions, solve problems, maintain healthy sleep habits, seek help, and support a friend.
An umbrella review published in 2026, covering 85 systematic reviews and 2,932 primary studies, found evidence supporting approaches including CBT, mindfulness, psychoeducation and socio-emotional skills programmes. But much of the evidence comes from high-income countries, with limited evidence from India and other low- and middle-income settings.
That matters. India cannot simply import programmes developed elsewhere and assume they will work in every classroom.
Interventions need to be adapted to local languages, families, schools, socioeconomic realities and cultural contexts.
And resilience cannot become another demand placed on an already overwhelmed child.
6. Listen to children
Perhaps one of the most overlooked interventions is also the simplest: ask children what is making life difficult.
Children often know things adults do not see — which spaces feel unsafe, which teachers they trust, why they avoid the counsellor, how academic competition affects them and whether bullying or discrimination is being addressed.
Dr Nagpal argues that young people themselves need to be part of the solution, including through leadership and life-skills programmes.
For younger children, child mental-health professional Neha says the same principle begins even earlier: with giving children enough emotional space to communicate in the way they know how.
“A lot of what we see in teenagers and young adults actually starts much earlier in life,” she says. “We tend to focus on adolescence, but the foundations are often laid during childhood.”
For a young child, distress may not sound like “I am anxious” or “I am struggling.” It may look like irritability, anger, withdrawal or simply shouting.
The adult response, she says, should be less about demanding an explanation and more about recognising the emotion: “You’re not feeling okay right now. I can sense it. How can I help you?”
7. Build solutions that can actually scale
This is particularly important in India, where there are far too few mental-health professionals to provide one-to-one therapy to every student who needs support.
An encouraging direction is low-intensity, school-based psychological intervention.
The question cannot only be: Does this intervention work?
It also has to be: Who can deliver it, where, at what cost — and how can it reach millions of children?
And perhaps there is one more question we need to ask at home.
Neha believes adults sometimes underestimate how much children learn simply by watching them.
“Children look to the adults in their lives as their reference point,” she says. “If the adults around them behave as though it is normal to be constantly on the phone or not fully present, children learn that this is how relationships are supposed to work.”
For her, mental-health protection begins with three things: real connection, a safe space to pause and the freedom to express what they are feeling.
Dr Nagpal puts the responsibility more broadly: families, schools, teachers, students and mental-health professionals all have a role.
The aim is not to raise children who never struggle.
It is to raise children who know that when they do struggle, someone will notice, someone will listen and there will be somewhere to turn.