Institutions must centre students' lived experiences to tackle the student suicide crisis in India. When teachers and parents label struggling students as indisciplined or abnormal, they ignore the root causes of distress. By giving students direct representation on committees, schools can create systemic solutions that are truly valid and sustainable.
In tackling student distress, institutions must centre students' lived experiences by ensuring their direct representation on all institutional committees, so that systemic solutions are valid and sustainable
After she became increasingly irregular in class, the teachers deemed a student's absenteeism, a misdemeanour. The parents were notified of her 'indiscipline', a label that aligned seamlessly with the teachers' accusations that she was a 'bad student'. As she became increasingly silent and withdrawn, parents consulted a tertiary mental healthcare centre where she was branded 'abnormal', in need of psychiatric treatment for depression.