As a young student, I was returning to my dormitory room one day after breakfast, and when I walked through the door, I saw Raman (name changed) sitting on his bed, eyes red, tears streaming down his cheeks. Even a boy could see that this was a matter more complex than tears; it offered a glimpse into the pain suppressed in Raman’s 13-year-old heart.

Raman was a reserved boy. But returning from vacation a year after this incident, he seemed to have shed all his reservation. He chattered away, he sang, he jumped, and he did stunts surrounded by the other boys. Raman was resolute and fearless.

Then one night when it was bedtime, everyone noticed Raman was nowhere to be seen. His father brought him back one morning two weeks later. That day, Raman didn’t talk, but he attended classes, ate dinner and went to bed. The next morning his bed was vacant before anyone else had woken up. When it was breakfast time and Raman still couldn’t be seen, it dawned on everyone that he had run away again.

This time, though, he did not return. Ten years later, I learned from friends that Raman had committed suicide a few years after running away.

Absolute priority

Our days in school began with morning assemblies. Teachers lectured us on the virtues of morality, discipline and hard work. They called out students who had made it to the ‘merit list’ or hailed the championships particular teams had won. They reiterated the importance of academic excellence, and warned against deviations from school rules.

Never in the entire eight years I spent in the school, an elite institution considered perhaps the best in the country, were we told about the worries we could face, about imminent setbacks in life, about the importance of sharing worries and pain and fears.

If we had known anything about emotional setbacks or mental health issues, perhaps we would have treated Raman differently. If a student’s emotional and psychological state were given due consideration by my school, perhaps Raman would not have felt so alone in his pain.  

Several similar stories exist. Not long after Raman ran away, a close friend jumped over the school wall and never returned. Ever since joining the school as a 10-year-old in Class Four, Niraj (named changed) felt intensely homesick, a feeling that assailed him even after spending five years in the school. So, one day, in Class Eight, he jumped over the school wall and never returned.

“I now feel as though perhaps I had some sort of depression. Otherwise, why would I feel homesick so intensely?” Niraj told me when we met several years after he had run away from school.

Over the years, I have heard stories from many friends, seniors, and juniors from school. They tell me of a teacher’s mistreatment, a senior’s bullying, and stories of mental illness—some of which even ended in suicides. A senior from school revealed a brave and touching story in a reputed magazine. He recounted how he was subjected to months of sexual abuse by senior students, and the emotional turmoil and struggle he experienced for the rest of his school years and many years later. 

World Health Organisation (WHO) says that 50 percent of all mental illnesses begin by the age of 14, making the role of schools vital in insuring that children grow to be emotionally healthy adults. But, emotional and psychological needs of students are rarely prioritised by Nepal’s schools, if addressed at all. 

Grave effects

Students face myriad problems. Homesickness, bullying, sexual and/or physical mistreatments by peers or teachers are common. “Poor” performance in studies, sports or extracurricular activities, comparison with peers and failure to outperform others are also common sources of worry. Students face the frustrations of puberty and sexual issues, first crushes and heartbreaks. This is also the age when they start experimenting with cigarettes, marijuana, drinking and drugs.

Students from remote regions have to deal with even more sources of stress. They are under pressure to manage household chores with coursework. Lack of hygiene and toilets make menstruation a stressful period. In spite of poor teaching, they are under tremendous stress to pass exams as was exemplified by the number of post-SLC result suicides in the past years.

It is astonishing how our school system consigns students’ emotional components to an inaccessible blind spot. Even when the aforementioned cases happened, my school did not feel it was responsible for reaching out to the students concerned and their families. A genuine enquiry to understand the cause of their running away was unheard of. Nor did these incidents prod the school management to explore and understand if similar stories existed, if others too, like Raman, were in desperate need of help. It was as though nothing had happened, as if two students named Raman and Niraj never enrolled in that school. The cases of these two boys disappeared from the memory of school administration. 

By associating the meaning of education with a student’s performance in exams, and promoting categories of “topper” and “best”, schools have induced unhealthy competition among students, resulting in low-confidence, lowered self-esteem and self-respect, and shame in students who have a subpar performance. Also, by treating smoking and taking drugs simply as ‘deviations’ from school discipline and norms, schools fail to view these actions with the larger psycho-social circumstance in mind. Ironically, schools, thus, have themselves exacerbated the emotional and psychological problems students face.

The way schools understand the purpose of education, and the school administration’s awareness and knowledge about manifold emotional and psychological problems students face as well as their ability to respond to these issues is the most urgently needed reform in Nepal’s education system today. Our schools are in need of serious soul searching to see how their ignorance of students’ emotional/psychological health is taking a toll on young minds.

Schools should take steps to enhance the understanding of mental health in schools. They should also understand the value of having a counsellor—preferably a psychologist, but also a trained, trusted teacher—who students can easily approach to share their problems and receive counsel.

An environment that is receptive to emotional and psychological needs, and someone to confide in could be all that is needed to resolve students’ issues. When I met Niraj, he told me, “If only someone had reached out to me and helped me with my homesickness, I would perhaps have been motivated to remain in the school.” Aware about the opportunities continuing in the same school would have brought him, his decision to run away clings to him as a bitter memory.

- Gautam writes on contemporary social and cultural issue