Hyderabad: There is a need for a long-term approach to prevent student suicides rather than immediate helplines and aftermath counselling, as students are not in a mood to listen and change their mind when they decided to commit suicide.
Many students take the extreme step out of a momentary impulse; they need to be taught to think wisely even in challenging times from the beginning, said psychological experts at a public awareness campaign to prevent suicides in the city on Thursday. They also said that teenagers are the most vulnerable group to commit suicides.
Experts also said that parents should not always be blamed as their only aim is that their child should be self-secure. Parents and institutes should let students explore and face challenges and take risks so that they are equipped to deal with failures in the long term, said Dr Raghurami Reddy, retired principal, Osmania Medical College.
Many students who actually qualify and get into prestigious institutes like the IITs, do not want to be engineers, but end up becoming one and regret later on.
“There is something fundamentally wrong with the goal setting process. There should not be only one goal; there should have be a plan B and failure should be treated as another learning process,” said Dr D. Keshav Rao, president of the Indian Psychiatric Society of Telangana.
The experts also said that most intermediate students are kept in the cages of corporate institutes without sports. They are not even being given breathing time, they should be given space to grow strong, bold and confident. Human minds do not expand with textbooks alone, they should have other extra-curricular activities mandatorily, said Dr A. Sai Baba, a Padmashri awardee and an ophthalmologist.
