Teen suicides - India Today

Deep inside the U-shaped complex of Delhi’s premier All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the clock clacks against the heavy silence in psychiatrist Manju Mehta’s chamber.

A mother sits huddled in front of her. “I want to say sorry for not listening to you,” she stutters as she talks and searches for words, her eyes welling with tears. Neither she nor her husband had accepted Mehta’s diagnosis that behind her son’s falling grades and temper tantrums, lay learning disability and severe depression. “Conduct disorder is his way of gaining self-respect,” Mehta had told them.

The parents, more interested in improving his school performance, had not heeded the advice, “Don’t put pressure on him.” Just before the annual exams, he had suddenly turned over a new leaf: he was nice to everyone, listened to everything his parents said, met up with people he was fond of.

Finally, one afternoon, he took his own life. “I quit,” read the chit lying on his bed.

Being a teenager has never been easy. But in the new millennium, amidst unprecedented prosperity, growing up seems to have become more trying than ever for Indian teens.

While self-inflicted deaths among adolescents in the West are levelling off, India is topping the world in teen suicides. If drugs, alcohol and firearms are the favourite routes to self-destruction in the West, it’s exam stress and inability to cope with disappointments here.

Every 90 minutes a teenager tries to commit suicide in India. Many of these attempts are half-hearted cries for attention, help and love. But every six hours, one succeeds.

Image
More adolescents die of suicide than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, obesity, birth defects and lung disease. In 2006-07 5,857 students took their own life, which works out to a stunning 16 suicides a day, says the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

While the global teen suicide rate is 14.5 per 100,000, a 2004 study by the Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, reported 148 for girls and 58 for boys in India.

If globally, suicide is the fourth leading cause of teen deaths, in India it is at number one in some pockets and is the third largest killer all across. Over 150 students ended their lives across the country last month.

to read further link