As Supreme Court moves to prevent student suicides, the buck stops where?

The Supreme Court's (SC) July 25 ruling on students' mental health is a turning point in the nation's education scene shaken by an increasing spate of student suicides, much of it fueled by pressure of performance and high-stress environments such as at entrance examination coaching institutes.

The SC has given binding national directions to reorganize the way educational institutions address issues of mental health. A panel of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta observed that India did not have a centralized, institutional response system to address student suicides and psychological trauma in educational institutions. The court reaffirmed that mental health is an aspect of the right of life under Article 21 of the Constitution.

The order asks all the Union territories and states to draft detailed rules within a timeframe of two months for regulation and registration of the coaching centers so that provisions of mental health and grievance redressal mechanism would be integrated into them. The regulations will be supervised by newly constituted district committees whereas the Union government has been asked to file a compliance affidavit within 90 days.

The essential message of the judgment is its demand that all education centers—school, college, university or coaching center—have a uniform mental health policy. The policy should be framed from the UMMEED Draft Guidelines, the education department's MANODARPAN scheme and the National Suicide Prevention Strategy, and revised each year. The institutions should have these prominently displayed on their websites and physical notice boards, and ensure transparency and accountability.

The ruling puts particular focus on the role of coaching colleges, which have faced growing scrutiny in recent years over the level of pressure said to be put on their students. Every coaching centre with over 100 students is required to have a full-time, trained counsellor. Others are required to have formal processes for referral in place to connect students with outside mental health professionals.

Student-to-counselor ratios should be kept low, and academic counseling part of the support structure. Certainly, the judgment prohibits separating children within class according to performance, shaming them publicly or overloading them with academic expectations which often lead to mental collapse.

The Supreme Court also urged strong suicide-prevention infrastructure in school settings. Schools should prominently publicize helpline numbers and create emergency referral systems. All teaching and non-teaching staff should undergo biennial training in psychological first aid and recognizing signs of emotional distress.

Parents are also drawn in by the preventive model: institutions will need to conduct periodic sensitisation programmes—off-campus or on-campus—to sensitise parents on identifying early warning signs of psychological distress, avoiding overloading students academically and offering emotional support. Not responding adequately or in time to such instances, particularly where neglect is a causative factor in a student's suicide or self-harm, will be determined as institutional fault, putting administrators in the legal and regulatory spot.

Also, the court has directed mental health consciousness, training in emotional resilience and life skills education to be incorporated into orientation courses and co-curricular activities. Schools and institutions of higher education are also required to maintain anonymous records of wellness programs, counseling sessions and awareness programs, and submit an annual report on mental health to their respective governing body, i.e., the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

For residential settings, the court has also recommended architectural solutions, such as the installment of tamper-proof ceiling fans and restricting access to rooftops and other high-risk areas, to dissuade impulsive suicide attempts. Most importantly, all staff must be trained to handle sensitively and inclusively students who belong to marginalised or vulnerable groups such as SC, ST, OBC, economically weaker sections, LGBTQ+, as well as differently abled or struggling with bereavement, trauma or past history of suicide attempts. Institutions should also have confidential grievance redressal systems through which students can report distress or harassment without fear of stigma or retaliation.

This verdict is issued at a time when India's top coaching institutions, from Kota to Jaipur, Sikar, Hyderabad, Delhi, Chennai and Mumbai, are reporting a spate of student suicides with an alarming rise. Kota, widely known as the 'coaching capital of India', has now become synonymous with the mounting psychological strain that the nation's competitive examination system is subjecting teenage students to.

According to Kota police statistics, between January 2022 and February 2025, at least 24 student suicides were reported among the students attending the city's coaching institutions. Of these, 19 students took their own lives by hanging, three by jumping in front of a moving vehicle, one by poisoning and one by falling under a train. According to the findings, 11 of the victims were due to academic pressure, six to romantic affair, two due to sickness, two due to domestic disturbances, and two due to Internet gaming addiction. One was due to drug abuse. In nine instances, pupils had already indicated suicidal thoughts; three had tried before, and three others had suicide history in their families.

The timing too was indicative, with 17 of the 24 deaths between January and April, ie, before most of the competitive exams. Most revealing of all, perhaps, 'performance gap' was a decisive influencer. Some of the victims couldn't reproduce their Class 10 high scores, with 14 of them having scored over 80 per cent, and this was the element which seemed to tip them over. The gender split also helped accelerate the number of gendered pressure population: 21 of the fatalities were boys and three girls only.

Another research conducted by the Kota Medical College, involving 27 students who had killed themselves between October 2022 and September 2023, presented an equally bleak report. Twenty-five of the deceased were NEET preparers and two JEE preparers. Stress and depression were the primary causes mentioned in 20 of them. Alarming as the figures were, most of the students were teenagers —two were 15, four were 16, 11 were 17, and six were 18 years old—demonstrating the vulnerability of adolescents being led to super-competitive spheres.

The SC's intervention couldn't have come at a more opportune moment. The court's recognition of mental well-being as a human right and its demand for institutional responsibility is the paradigm shift that is needed. But the real test will be the extent to which these guidelines are implemented. Without funding, trained psy professionals and an enduring cultural shift—from repressive to compassionate—the guidelines might be relegated to paper.

If taken heed of, the verdict can not only that but by and large emotionally strengthen India's youth. In the fullness of time, it can put an end to drug abuse, gaming disorder and other adverse addictions prevalent among vulnerable adolescents. The SC has done its job; now it is the turn of schools, parents, governments and society at large to take this legal and moral call.