Student suicides: SC-appointed taskforce gets time till October 31 for final report

The exercise also gathered responses from 1,59,881 faculty members, 2,25,825 parents, 6,859 mental health service providers, and another 2,25,460 public feedback submissions.

Requesting further time, the NTF said that it is “in the process of consolidating institutional data, stakeholder inputs, field observations, and survey findings for the purpose of preparing comprehensive recommendations concerning student mental health and suicide prevention in higher educational institutions”.

The NTF’s interim findings, released on June 8, argued that student suicides in India cannot be understood merely as a mental health issue but are often rooted in deeper structural problems, including discrimination, exclusion, financial vulnerability, institutional failures and inaccessible support systems.

The NTF has so far visited 31 higher educational institutions across the country, ranging from elite institutes and central universities to private universities, medical colleges, law schools, nursing colleges and mental health institutions.

The NTF members interacted with students, faculty members, counsellors, wardens and administrators to understand issues relating to “student mental health, institutional support systems, grievance redressal mechanisms, counselling infrastructure, discrimination, accessibility and student well-being”.

Hearing a matter on the death of two students at IIT Delhi, the Supreme Court constituted the NTF in March last year to look into mental health concerns among students, and make recommendations on improving student mental health and prevention of suicides in higher education institutions.