“We were preparing him for a bright future. We never imagined he wouldn’t be there to live it.” – A parent after losing their 16-year-old son to suicide
  According to a study every day 6.23 students commit suicide in India and in a year, it is approximately 2274 students. Teen suicide is not an isolated tragedy. It is a silent epidemic. Beneath the applause of academic achievements and trophies lies a growing graveyard of potential, of dreams extinguished too soon.
 Around the world, particularly in academically competitive societies, teenagers are increasingly succumbing to unbearable pressure, not just from war, disease, or poverty but from exams, grade sheets, and unrealistic expectations. In many cases, they do not want to die, they just want the pain, the pressure, the constant measuring stick, to stop.
  This article is a call to action. Not just for educators or policymakers but for every parent, teacher, counsellor, and institution that holds the weight of a child’s future in their hands.
 Psychologically, adolescence is a period of identity formation, emotional turbulence, and fragile self-worth. The teenage brain, particularly the prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making and impulse control), is still developing. As a result, teenagers often feel emotions more intensely and are more vulnerable to despair.
When they face:
l Chronic stress
l Constant comparison
l Perceived failure
l Lack of emotional outlets
...they can spiral into depression and suicidal ideation faster than adults might realize.
  In psychology, this is called learned helplessness-when no matter how hard they try, nothing seems enough. Eventually, hopelessness becomes the dominant emotion.
Many current education systems treat students as products, not people. Standardized tests, rote learning, and relentless academic benchmarking prioritize grades over growth. Schools often confuse discipline with pressure, equating long hours and mental exhaustion with “rigor.”
Students are:
l Ranked publicly in ways that humiliate rather than motivate
l Denied autonomy over what or how they learn
l Taught to fear mistakes rather than embrace them as part of learning
  Worse, success is defined within a narrow frame: STEM achievements, high test scores, prestigious colleges. But where is the room for artists, poets, caretakers, or slow bloomers?
 While schools and exams are the most visible triggers, they exist within a larger ecosystem that intensifies the pressure.
Parents: The First Institution of Pressure
 In many cases, it starts at home. Parents, often unintentionally, transfer their unfulfilled dreams onto their children. They use comparisons (“Look at Sharmaji’s son”), guilt tripping (“We sacrificed everything for you”), and threats (“If you don’t score, you won’t succeed in life”), crippling a child’s sense of self-worth.
 Here is a message to parents: Your child is not your redemption. They are not a CV. They are not your second chance. They are a life and not a project.
Teachers: The Makers or Breakers
 A teacher can either ignite a student’s curiosity or extinguish it forever. Yet, in the race to complete syllabi and maintain results, empathy often takes a back seat.
When teachers dismiss a student’s struggles with a “You must try harder” or mock their failures, they erode the safe space a classroom should be.
 Message to Teachers: Every word you speak echoes in a teenager’s mind. Be a mirror of possibility and not of pressure.
Peers and Social Media: The Echo Chamber of Comparison
 Today’s teens live not just in classrooms but in curated online worlds. Every post becomes a performance. Every failure feels global. Cyberbullying, toxic competitiveness, and unrealistic success narratives on platforms like Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn compound the problem.
Imagine being 16, failing a test, and then scrolling through images of “teen CEOs” and “IIT cracked at 15” posts. It’s crushing.
 Despite being hyperconnected, teenagers are emotionally isolated. Counselling is stigmatized, vulnerability is mocked, and mental health conversations are often treated as weakness.
 Few schools have licensed therapists. Fewer still have mental health policies. Most students report that they cannot confide in either parents or teachers without fear of being judged or punished.
Ask yourself: Who do your children or students feel safe talking to when they are failing?
 The rise in teen suicide is not a statistic. It’s a scream that wasn’t heard. It is often preceded by subtle signs: withdrawal, irritability, fatigue, loss of interest. But too often, these are dismissed as “teen drama” or “laziness.”
 And then one day, there’s a call from the school, or a knock on the door and it’s too late.
 If a child dies because of academic pressure, the failure is not theirs, it is ours.
 We must reframe success as well-being, not just achievement. Because no medal, no rank, no score is worth a child’s life.
 Let this article not be another emotional post you scroll past. Let it be the moment you pause, reflect, and promise to do better for your students, your children, your institutions, and your legacy.
 Let us create a world where a teenager’s report card doesn’t determine their worth or their will to live.
 Because very soon, we are about to reach a point where, when a student is asked, “What do you want to be?” and the answer might simply be: “Alive.”