‘Hear me, I am not okay’: Young India & mental health

Growing up is difficult. Adolescents from Gen-Z have their own set of challenges and struggles. Let’s step into their shoes for a moment. A twenty-first century teenager is living in a world that’s evolving, growing and changing at an unfathomable pace. Since adolescence is also the time where a child develops most of their emotional and social learning skills, being flooded with so much information coupled with how social media has come to redefine their lives, can be extremely overwhelming. Taking academics and career as an example, they continue to be amongst the biggest factors contributing to stress and anxiety in the youth. While a child in India today has multiple options and streams to choose from, it’s not always easy to make a choice due to continuous parental pressure, lack of financial support and lack of appropriate guidance.

In today’s day and age the internet is full of information around homosexuality, asexuality, pansexuality and several other forms of non-heterosexuality, piquing the young minds to discover their individual identities. Gender roles and our ideas around sexuality & identity are becoming increasingly fluid by the day. All of this is occurring while our previous generations continue to remain conservative or limited in their exposure to this information. So a young adolescent growing up in the Indian society right now has access to this knowledge, is trying to identify themselves but is seldom given the space to voice what they’re experiencing. This process can be especially draining, stressful and often isolating for a young person. Due to the lack of conversation around mental wellbeing on dinner tables and classroom settings, it’s additionally hard for the youth to open up and share what they might be going through.

Many of these factors could possibly explain the rise in mental health concerns among young Indians. Let’s take a look at what statistics tell us; according to WHO, 10-20% of children and adolescents experience mental health conditions, but a majority of them do not seek help or receive care. Half of all mental health conditions start by 14 years of age. Suicide is the third leading cause of death in 15-19 year-olds. Additionally, the findings of the National Mental Health Survey 2016 revealed that nearly 9.8 million young Indians aged between 13-17 years are in need of active interventions. These figures are alarming to say the least.

As a platform which has spent a larger part of the last three years extensively interacting with youngsters across the country, we observed that some of the major concerns affecting the mental health of this generation include – stress & anxiety related to career and academics, loneliness pertaining to not having enough friends, difficulty talking to parents, body & self image issues, trauma caused due to sexual harassment, homophobia, bullying faced in schools and tuition centres and conflicts with parents & teachers. When we asked teens about thoughts that kept them awake at night and reasons for their mental distress they had statements like “Why am I always sad, what’s wrong with me?”, “I’m not able to live up to my parents expectations and it has ruined my confidence,” “I struggle with self esteem issues- I don’t know who I am,” “Am I capable of being loved?”, “Why do I get bullied so often?”, “My career will be over before it even starts if I fail this entrance exam.” These interactions were disturbing, upsetting and eye-opening to say the least. Further, with regard to the Covid-19 pandemic, students are in a great deal of distress due to uncertainty over exams, online classes, college admissions, future career plans and discord with parents at home. A country with one of the world’s largest youth populations is failing its young. Our teenagers are under mountains of stress and are finding it difficult to express and seek help.

There are multiple causes that prevent adolescents from receiving professional support in state of mental distress. Since a majority of Indian households are still in the process of unlearning the taboo around mental health, kids don’t get the right support and space to open up. Further, their experiences and thoughts are dismissed or invalidated saying that they’re ‘too young’ or ‘too naive’ to understand things. To add to this, the economic burden of seeking help is immense. Not everyone is privileged enough to access help from private practitioners, and a majority relies on government healthcare infrastructure and schemes. The need for a better public infrastructure and policy is evident. As rightly pointed in the recommendations of the National Mental Health Survey 2016, “The funding for mental health programmes needs to be streamlined with good planning, increased allocation, performance based timely disbursal, guaranteed complete utilisation and robust mechanisms for oversight and accountability.” Even modern day government initiatives like the National Education Policy 2020 focus on ‘Fit India’ wanting to make youngsters active with regards to their physical health. While both physical and mental health deserve attention, the latter needs dedicated schemes and an enhanced priority.

Furthermore, schools and educational institutes must introspect on how they can truly be safe spaces for students. They have the power to play a key role in – if and how adolescents receive mental healthcare. As of now, not all schools have trained and experienced counsellors and many students have shared with us how they find it hard to open up or even go see a counsellor due to the fear of being judged, scolded or getting mocked by their peers. How can a child feel safe to open up and ask for help inside school premises? Can schools take up sensitisation activities and workshops? These are some thoughts that principals, teachers as well as parents must think about.

Finally, parents are the biggest stakeholders when it comes to the mental wellbeing of adolescents. A hostile environment at home towards a child’s academics, identity and aspirations is a major cause for distress in adolescents. Growing up with the feeling of not being understood by your own parents can be very disturbing and demotivating. Casually throwing around statements like “you’re a thankless generation” or “you don’t know the value of hardwork” would only add to the generation divide. Parents must be willing to educate themselves and accept the changes their child may be going through. As a parent, they have the power to spot early signs if their child is not feeling okay by simply creating a more empathetic environment at home and encouraging their child to open up. Their attitude towards their child’s mental health can be the make or break.

This World Health Day, we can start by listening and being more empathetic towards young India. We have all had our own struggles growing up. While our previous generations have grown up with mental distress too, they’ve not had access to the right knowledge and tools to acknowledge and address it. We now have the opportunity to do right by the young. Today, suicide is the third leading factor of death among adolescents (WHO) and our collective efforts can help change that. Imagine raising a generation that’s being heard, accepted and given their fundamental right to access mental healthcare without a second thought? What a beautiful world would that be.