Another young man from Meghalaya died of suicide in Bengaluru on Sunday. Police have quickly attributed the reason to unrequited love, based on a suicide note they found written by him. A quick glance at the Facebook profile of the deceased informs us that he must have yearned to be liked. In bold letters he asks, “Do You Like Me?” Clearly there is much that is amiss with our young people today which we have not been able to put a finger on. Psychologists and psychiatrists are in short supply in this country. Statistics tell us that there is one psychiatrist for three lakh people in India and roughly about two crore Indians need psychiatric help. In Meghalaya, we can count less than ten psychiatrists for a population that is increasingly showing signs of severe mental health problems. There is a feeling that the breakdown of community and family support systems and excessive family pressure to excel in studies is one reason why youth easily become depressed and no longer value their lives. Young people need mentors who can listen to them and hear them out. Schools, colleges and universities are supposed to have such mentorship programmes as well as professional counsellors. The problem is that we don’t even have enough clinical psychologists around.
Normally you would believe that someone who qualifies to study engineering would be a bright young person with a driving ambition to make it in life. But whether the deceased had the aptitude for the engineering course he was sent to study or whether he had other interests is difficult to ascertain. There is obviously something deeper that is troubling the youth of today. Life has too many shades of grey that we have yet to decipher. If it’s not substance abuse then its suicide. In both cases we are losing our bright young minds too soon. Ironically even religion seems to have failed to get a grip on the youth. The young today don’t attend church because they find the atmosphere stifling. But is anyone listening to these voices that are now choking to death? Our education system too has failed to inculcate life skills which empower the young to fight their battles outside the cosy confines of the classroom. Youth need to know that failure is not the end of the road. Clearly the youth need to develop a tougher moral and psychological fibre and they can do so provided we have the a responsive educational and social support system.