Suicide Prevention: Academic pressure on higher studies and its impact on student's mental health

In India, where students make up 60% of the population, more than 1 lakh people commit suicide each year. According to recent news from IIT Hyderabad, two Ph.D. students committed suicide. When students face difficulties with their studies, IIT has the best counselor on campus. But "suicide is not an answer; the soul still continues with emotions and experiences." Police recovered a suicide note from one of the Ph.D. students, where the student highlighted the reason for the submission of his thesis. That's how academic pressure impacts students' mental health, which leads to suicide. Another reason mentioned by him is that he does not want to continue with this life due to placement pressure and future struggles in getting a job. It is no wonder that so many children, adolescents, and young adults are taking extreme steps. But it is quite shocking when students from such esteemed institutions commit suicide. Of course, there are several reasons too, but we should stop exaggerating the importance of IITs and IIMs. It is more about acceptance of failure in life and openness to profound learning. Nowadays, the teaching system is based on profound knowledge and simple learning. However, it should be based on profound learning and simple knowledge. Pressure does not always come from a longer syllabus; it can be humiliation by supervisors who are full of ego. Academic pressure in higher education includes factors such as a heavy course load, a lack of physical activity, and exams that last a long time. New learning is always stressful with anxiety. However, students tend to lose their mental health when competing with others. As I already said, learning should always be profound, not just knowledge since it's all there in Google, which we can get at any time, and should not have a fear of losing any information. Other reasons for suicide include mental illness, personality disorders, the presence of deleterious genes, psychosocial stress, cultural pressure, the influence of ignorance, inadequate cognition, etc. Whenever people think about suicide, they are unsure about whether the decision and conversion from suicidal motive to actual suicide often occur emotionally as a reaction to acute psychosocial stressors, especially among young people. There are different types of methods of committing suicide, like hanging, jumping, strangling, poisoning, running into traffic, and firearms. Rational accessibility plays an important role in youth suicide, especially from thought to actual suicide, and from the point of good public mental health, suicide in higher education is the dominant issue to talk about.

Spiritual knowledge still lacks in higher studies because after having counselors on the campus, no depression signs were found in the students. Spiritual knowledge itself is called awareness, and if your awareness is high, then there is no chance of committing suicide. And that is why we need a synergy of science and spirituality so many researchers and scholars are learning with efficiency without having thought of suicide. Education should bring freedom, not imprisonment, and only spiritual education can unshackle people from a downward spiral. It is time to make spiritual education a mandatory unit in every institution, and people must be encouraged to take advantage of this spiritual education when it is needed to provide them with all the social and psychological support they need. Suicide prevention initiatives can be population-based or targeted at high-risk groups, especially school-based or institutional-based, and educate monitors in every domain. Though the latest buzzword is "online help," if someone has a sign of suicidal tendencies, they should visit a psychologist for a one-on-one before the issue becomes severe. We, as human beings, are a combination of body and mind, so spirituality keeps the balance of physical, mental, and emotional health, and spirituality also helps pass through suffering or struggles in life. It is simply an argument about one's ignorance of oneself, which can be referred to as knowing oneself. There will be a decrease in the number of suicides if someone is making gradual progress in life through spiritual experiences or practices, and according to Vedanta philosophy, knowing oneself is equivalent to knowing God. It has also been scientifically proven by magnetoencephalography (MEG) that while doing meditation there are certain changes in the brain. If you are spiritually aware, you actually become passionate about your career, improve your emotional health and improve your self-confidence, and if you have these attributes in you, then there is no chance of having suicidal tendencies. Spirituality reinforces perspective for a preferable future. It also improves the ability to deal with the difficulties of life. Practicing yoga, meditation, and spending time in nature improves spiritual well-being and spiritual intelligence. Once you dive into spirituality, you feel a high sense of purpose in life, peace, and hope. You no longer have any suicidal thoughts or agitation in your mind, and this keeps you always happy and kind to others. We all should have good will towards spiritual practises because the emotions we have while praying to God we get according to that only. We should always be open to new learning, like spiritual reset, or to finding new methods of joy. When we are happy, our health is always good, and when we are sad, our thoughts and emotions support our physiology, which encourages our mental ability and finds difficulties in decision-making, which leads to committing suicide. Even in the basic education system, we should not jump right into studies, but rather teach students life lessons first. Second, technology has an impact on our daily lives; we are easily influenced by the external world that we connect with in our lives and tend to cause havoc in them. Whatever we do in our daily lives, we must always maintain a sense of balance. That is why we might have seen in the lesson of Bhagavad-Gita as Rajas, Tamas, and Sattva, where Sattva is the quality of clarity and consciousness, where Rajas is the quality of energy and passion, and Tamas is the quality of darkness.

THANK YOU

Mayur Raturi from Rishikesh Uttarakhand