The missing link in suicide prevention

India’s suicide numbers are alarming. In 2023, the suicide rate was 12.3 per one lakh, higher than the global average. Beyond grief, there is also a material economic burden, estimated at over Rs 1.40 lakh-crore annually. But the real cost is the families that fracture, survivors who live with the question, “What did I miss?”

When people talk about suicide, the conversation often is in the vague form of ‘stress’ and ‘pressure’ that are not new. What is new is the scale at which people are losing the ability to carry pain without turning it inward. Suicidal behaviour is rooted in an unregulated state of mind shaped by helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness and purposelessness. The tragedy is not that such emotions exist but that many people have never been taught how to recognise them, work through them, and cope adaptively when they spike.

The missing link in suicide prevention is not a generic appeal to ‘talk about it’, but the ability to name emotions accurately, regulate overwhelm, and access support before the mind locks into a fatal conclusion. That capability is emotional intelligence (EI); India must start treating it as a serious prevention tool, and not a soft skill.

The reason why EI matters is simple. For many, suicide is a short, crushing window where pain feels endless and the future feels closed. When the mind cannot tolerate distress, it searches for an exit. EI is about the difference between ‘I cannot live with this feeling’ and ‘This feeling is unbearable, but it will pass’. A moment that can be survived can lead to a life that can continue.

Evidence on this is quite clear. EI is associated with better emotion regulation, stronger coping mechanisms, and greater access to social support, all of which reduce suicide risk. Research among adolescents shows that higher EI is linked to lower suicidal ideation; EI-focused interventions can reduce hopelessness and suicidal thoughts. Hopelessness is one of the most dangerous psychological states because it collapses the future. If EI reduces hopelessness, it reduces risk.

How much can EI help? EI perhaps will not prevent every suicide, but if EI meaningfully reduced emotional dysregulation and hopelessness at scale, the impact is large. In a country of our size, even a modest reduction in suicidal ideation translates into thousands of lives that do not cross a line in a moment of overwhelm.

If EI is a prevention lever, the next question is where prevention can actually happen at scale. It is where India has both reach and routine: education. Suicide strikes hardest during the formative and productive years. Nearly two in three deaths by suicide occur among adults between 18 and 45, and adolescents are not spared. Education and employment, often assumed to be protective, offer no immunity. Which means the problem is not that people are uneducated but that education has not been designed to prepare people for emotional reality.

Unfortunately, our current education system trains students to perform, but not to endure. It teaches them problem-solving but not to metabolise failure, rejection, shame, and conflict. When those emotions arrive, many default to suppression, isolation, or collapse. If EI is learnable and core EI capabilities are teachable, then its absence must be seen as a systemic failure rather than a personal one.

Educational institutions are among the few platforms that reach people early, consistently, sustainably, and at scale. That makes them central to any serious national response. We should stop treating EI as an optional life-skills workshop and start treating it as early-stage public health prevention. This demands two shifts. First, EI must become a core learning outcome, not an add-on that appears once a year and disappears when exams begin. Second, we must build EI across the ecosystem, not just in students, because emotional regulation cannot flourish in a culture that mocks vulnerability.

We must remember, when pain peaks, one does not rise to the level of their intentions. One falls to the level of their training. And right now, regrettably, our systems are not training people enough to stay alive in their hardest hour.

(The writer is the founder of a B2B that focuses on holistic health and wellness programmes)