Colleges lack counselling centres despite spate of student suicides in TN

After three students from SRM university committed suicide within three months, psychologists have expressed concern about the increase in student suicide cases on college campuses. They also emphasised on the need to introduce effective measures to ensure that colleges offer counselling services.

Experts claimed that while there is a lack of awareness on the availability of psychological support and counselling, many colleges fail to provide such services which could have possibly prevented students from taking their lives.

But, it is not just private college and universities that lack student psychological counselling centres, none of the government colleges in the state have counselling centres. It was only this month that the state health department announced that all government medical colleges in the state would have their own helpline numbers which will be operated under the common state-wide 104 telemedicine helpline, to support and provide psychological aid to those who need it.

With increasing societal demands, academic stress, peer pressure, relationship problems, poor impulse regulation, frustration intolerance and unrealistic expectations about life among young students pose them at increased risk of psychological issues and even suicides, say psychologists. Students, however, either remain unaware of such a provision at educational institutions or hesitate to contact these centres to seek help.

Dr Srinivasan Jayaraman, a consultant clinical neuropsychologist at Rainbow Children’s Hospital, said, “Students exhibit symptoms such as irritation, agitation and restlessness shows that the parent needs to intervene and seek medical attention. As a psychologist we identify factors such as child abuse, peer pressure, conflicts with peers and drug abuse whereas the academic is very seldom the reason of suicides among youngsters.” He added, “Over the years, the number of cases of suicides among youngsters has increased. In such a scenario, the parents need to be more communicative than authoritative.”

Psychologists said that children are likely to develop mental health conditions at an extremely young age, but sometimes they express it differently.

As per a report by Indian Council of Medical Research, 12–13 per cent school students in the country suffer from emotional, behavioural, and learning problems. “Universities and colleges should introduce the concept of counselling centres properly and inform them of these services on their induction in the colleges to make them less hesitative and aware of the psychological counselling services,” said Dr Srinivasan.

Dr Vivian Kapil, a psychiatrist from SIMS Hospital, said, “It is imperative for every educational institution to have student counselling centres with a full time psychologist or counsellor to address the needs of the students and suggest appropriate referrals to psychiatrists. Effective functioning of student counselling centres at the right time would go a long way in combating this issue of student suicides as the intolerance behaviour patterns is greater among youngsters.”

Psychologists said that suicides need to be discouraged but are often glorified when reported and the sensationalisation leads to propagation of the suicidal thoughts among vulnerable people.

Jessie Nargunam, a student counsellor at a private college in the city, said, “When students get to know of others committing suicide, they do not get scared by it, but often get prompted to take it up as a solution to their problems. Students are vulnerable as some of them stay away from home and deal with problems in relationships or studies. If one case appears, it can lead to a phenomenon called ‘copycat suicide’ or ‘Werther effect’.”

A copycat suicide or Werther effect is a phenomenon of imitating an attempt to suicide on acquisition of any such case in the surroundings. Werther effect is quite likely to affect the friends, family or acquaintances of the person who commits suicide. Psychologists said that a negative influence such as this which triggers depression and curiosity should be kept in check to avoid copycat suicides.

Dr Zakir, psychologist and counsellor at a private college in the city, said, “The youngsters are not in the habit of dealing with failure in daily life situations or academics as they come to college. The suicide contemplations arise due to the inability to accept failure and self-blaming behaviour that leads to impulsive suicides among the students. As the competition in the educational field has increased, students are overburdened with academic pressure and they are unable to tolerate it.”

Currently, the Institute of Mental Health offers 24x7 helpline to offer counselling and psychological support to those in distress. The 104 helpline by the state health department has received 35.24 lakh calls till March 2019. “We offer round the clock counselling services at IMH and the programme will be expanded under the 104 services to offer counselling services in all government medical colleges.

The counselling centres certainly help the students who need psychological aid, however, there is no mandating rule to have these services available in all colleges as of now,” said Dr Poorna Chandrika, the director of Institute of Mental Health.