Student suicides: A growing problem in India

The Kallakurichi District of Tamil Nadu is in mourning for a 17-year-old girl student of a private school who took her own life on July 17. The state saw four other student suicides last month. Crime data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the Ministry of Education that was collated by The Hindustan Times suggests that the problem of student suicides is getting worse.

India's suicide statistics can be found in the NCRB’s Accidental Deaths and Suicide in India (ADSI) document, which was last updated in 2020. It has been documented since 1995. Apart from absolute numbers, the ADSI also provides the rate of suicides, which is the number of suicides per one lakh population. The HT report calculated student suicide rates with data from the District Information System for Education and the All India Survey on Higher Education.

Between 2010 and 2019, student suicide rates in India have increased, with numbers flattening between 2017 and 2019. Among the large states of the country, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have ranked consistently high for student suicides in the last five years, the report said.

Though not comprehensive, ADSI provides some data on suicide causes in different age groups. For the under-30 age group in 2019, family problems were listed as the primary cause, followed by illnesses and failure in exams. Most students would fall into this age category. Suicides caused due to exam failures fell by 1.47% in 2020, which might be due to the exam postponements during the pandemic.

Family problems have been listed as the major reason for suicides since 1995 and showed an increasing trend. Also, there has been a significant increase in number of student suicides as well as its share in overall suicides between 2019 and 2020.