Student suicide cases | Centre forms national task force to focus on mental health

New Delhi: With rising cases of death by suicide among students, the union ministry of education has formed a National Task Force to combat mental health issues, under the Chairmanship of Justice (Retd) S Ravindra Bhat to identify the causes behind such cases and recommend changes.

The Task Force comes after the Supreme Court judgement of March this year where it expressed concern about the rising incidence of suicides among students in universities and colleges. Among the 12 members of the committee are psychiatrist Dr Alok Sarin, Professor Mary E John, disability activist Arman Ali, Dr Seema Mehrotra of NIMHANS (Member) as members and higher education secretary Dr Vineet Joshi as ex-officio member and member secretary. Rina Sonowal Kouli, joint secretary of the department of higher education will be the Convener of the Task Force.

Ex-officio members of the Task Force include Home Secretary Govind Mohan, Department of School Education Secretary Sanjay Kumar, Social Justice and Empowerment Ministry Secretary Amit Yadav, Secretary, Women and Child Development Ministry Secretary Anil Malik, Health Secretary Punya Salila Srivastava, and Dr Anju Rathi Rana, Secretary of the Department of Legal Affairs.

The Task Force is mandated to identify predominant causes which lead to such cases, including ragging, discrimination, academic pressure, financial burden and mental health related stigma. They will also have to analyse existing regulations to “assess the institutional and systemic failures that may impact student wellbeing”. The Force will also have to recommend steps to improve mental health among students to prevent suicides.

The taskforce will visit various institutions and interact with various sets of stakeholders. “The interactions take into consideration the intersectional identities of the students and involve especially meeting students from various disadvantaged sections of the society,” a release from the ministry said. The taskforce will also look into infrastructure and services for preventing student distress.

The taskforce will also seek views of the stakeholders through online survey questionnaires. “These will be filled by students in HEI, parents of such students, their faculty members, and mental health service providers. These surveys are available in English and Hindi,” the ministry said.