Indian students are buckling under the weight of academic pressure, career uncertainty, and inadequate support systems, a new report has warned — painting a stark picture of a generation in distress.

The IC3 Student Suicide Aversion Report 2025, unveiled at the Annual IC3 Conference and Expo in Mumbai this week, surveyed 8,542 students from classes 8 to 12 and uncovered troubling trends in student mental health:

·        One in five students rarely feels calm, motivated, or excited about life.

·        40 percent do not know where to seek mental health support in school.

·        Nearly half have never received structured career counseling.

·        Girls are almost twice as likely as boys to feel persistent sadness.

·        Three out of four Class 12 students are chronically sleep-deprived due to academic pressure and overthinking.

“This is no longer a silent problem. It is a visible and urgent crisis,” said Ganesh Kohli, Founder of the IC3 Movement. “Almost half of our students remain unsure of where to seek help, and career anxiety continues to steal their sleep and peace of mind. Mental health cannot be treated as optional. Every school must make counseling part of its core infrastructure.”

Emotional distress & gender disparities

The report highlights stark gender gaps. Girls reported higher levels of sadness and were more likely to internalise stress without professional support, while non-binary students recorded the lowest levels of overall well-being. With professional guidance scarce, many distressed students turned first to friends — peers often unprepared to handle such crises.

Career anxiety & sleepless nights

Uncertainty about future prospects emerged as one of the three leading stressors. The absence of career counseling has left many students adrift, compounding academic pressure. For Class 12 students, this is translating into chronic sleep deprivation, with three in four failing to get the recommended 7–8 hours of rest on school nights.

Call for systemic change

The conference, themed “Counseling as a Culture”, drew over 1,500 educators, counselors, and university representatives from 95 countries. Sessions stressed the need to embed counseling into schools, train teachers as first responders, and create systemic safety nets for students.

Key voices — from actor Boman Irani and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik to education leaders and public figures including Ratna Pathak Shah, Soha Ali Khan, and Ronnie Screwvala — echoed the call for collective responsibility in safeguarding student well-being.

Adding urgency, the Supreme Court has recently underscored the need for stronger school-based counseling frameworks. Marking its 10th year, IC3 also announced IC3 On Demand — a customizable model to help schools integrate counseling — and expanded its regional conferences to address localized needs.

The message was clear: unless counseling becomes central to education, India’s students will continue to pay the price with their health, sleep, and futures.