High IQ, low EQ: The mental health vacuum in Indian education system

From the get-go, children are pushed to ace in school. The initial eighteen years are expected to be fully focused on getting the highest grades and getting enrolled in the most prestigious colleges and universities. The utmost dedication towards academics has yielded good results. But these achievements feel “hollow” as they have come at the cost of our emotional resilience. 

An IAS officer from Uttar Pradesh, Divya Mittal, recently shared on X: “IIT Delhi to IIM Bangalore to IAS. I got the best education my country had to offer. It taught me how to crack tough exams and manage big responsibilities. But it never taught me how to quiet my own mind or handle loneliness.” 

Mittal is not alone. Her post garnered attention quickly, with several others echoing similar views. People are taught to earn degrees, money, and fame, but are rarely taught ways to deal with failure, loneliness, or simply express their emotions. 

A system built on pressure

In India, academic excellence is often built on chronic pressure rather than emotional development. Many students grow up understanding that education is not simply about learning or exploring, but about survival, stability, family responsibility, and social mobility. 

We live in a country with intense competition, limited seats, high unemployment, and weak institutional support systems, Tanisha Goveas, a Mumbai-based psychologist, explains. Because of this, students are conditioned very early to believe that one exam, one rank, or one admission outcome can determine the trajectory of their entire lives, as well as the lives of their families.

“The system heavily rewards conformity, comparison, and collective achievement,” Shuchita Dua, founder and integrative psychologist, Aariv Infinite, Gurugram, says. Children are conditioned to focus on performance over self-discovery. Therefore, slowly, success becomes their identity well into adulthood.

As a result, many students enter adulthood academically skilled, but emotionally disconnected from who they are outside of achievement. As Mittal put it: “We memorised the periodic table, but no one explained the chemistry of a broken heart. The school demanded we stay quiet, confusing silence with peace. Now, we don't know how to host our own storms without drowning in them. We feel lost because we were taught to suppress, not to process”. 

Students are put under extreme pressure without being taught how to process it or cope with it. They learn discipline and are rewarded for displaying hyper-functionality and self-sacrifice. But, they lose out on emotional regulation, self-worth outside achievement, and how to cope with uncertainty.

What further complicates this is that the system itself often feels unstable and unpredictable. Students are expected to invest years into pathways where rules can suddenly change; exams may be compromised, eligibility criteria shift, or professional regulations remain unclear, Goveas feels. Because of this, even highly hardworking students develop a relationship with achievement that is rooted in anxiety rather than confidence.

When the education system becomes a source of anxiety

Many Indian students first experience profound loneliness during transition periods: moving to a new school, starting college, preparing for competitive exams, entering corporate environments, or finishing years of structured education and suddenly facing uncertainty, Goveas observes.

Loneliness often emerges after years of external structure. Many students grow up constantly surrounded by people. Whether it is family members, classmates, coaching centres, or hostel environments. They form relationships and friendships based on familiarity and proximity, without necessarily developing emotional intimacy, self-awareness, or emotional independence.

Systemic gaps deepen these feelings. “Career guidance remains inconsistent, mental health infrastructure in many schools and colleges is inadequate, and institutional communication is often unclear or inaccessible,” Goveas says. Students are expected to make enormous decisions with very little psychological containment.

The loneliness no one warns about

In recent years, many young adults are also confronting a deeper kind of loneliness: disillusionment. Goveas observes that students enter adulthood believing that if they work hard enough, stability will follow. But many instead encounter unstable job markets, unclear professional pathways, exploitative work cultures, delayed systems, or institutions that feel unreliable. This uncertainty creates interpersonal loneliness, a deep sense of alienation and emotional uncertainty about the future itself.

In many Indian homes, children learn to suppress emotional vocabulary very early in life. Loneliness is often interpreted as weakness, overthinking, ingratitude, or simply “having too much time.” So instead of recognising what they are actually feeling, they may incorrectly label it as “stress,” “tiredness,” or “boredom.” 

Most students today cope with loneliness through hyper-distraction rather than emotional processing. Excessive social media use, binge-watching, gaming, doom-scrolling, casual dating, overworking, or staying constantly busy are common coping mechanisms.

What schools need to do differently

“Schools do not just need a mental health curriculum but actually need to focus on helping children adopt mental health strategies in practice,” Dua suggests. A school curriculum does not need to teach children how to isolate themselves. It needs to teach emotional regulation, self-awareness, and comfort with their inner world. 

Experts recommend that schools include emotional literacy sessions, reflective journaling, discussions around rejection and failure, boundary setting, building an internal locus of control, and learning how to spend time meaningfully without constantly needing stimulation, social media, or validation from others.