There is a crisis building up across India, more so in the urban centres. It involves young people showing symptoms of increasing restiveness and mental health issues that include expressions of challenging authority—be it aimed at families, institutions or the government. Not a day goes by without cases of teenagers resorting to dying by suicide, indulging in sexual violence (including targeting other minors), indulging in rash acts of violence, or displaying extreme behaviours in public like performing wheelies on roads while posing a threat to others and risking their own lives. The Bengaluru police’s recent month-long drive against wheelies on roads saw 398 cases being booked and 324 people, including 82 minors, arrested.
Mental health experts have pointed to a rise of this worrisome phenomenon among teenagers and young adults, especially after they spent two years of the Covid pandemic secluded in a digital-dependent world. Faced with excessive individualisation, young people are perceiving a breakdown of social norms and values, leading to instability and a sense of disconnect or even alienation. They stay away from community participation, consider self-harm an option, and seek validation online. They lose belief in institutions and traditional career-building options as job opportunities diminish. Some even end up being prone to committing crime.
The worrying symptoms include adolescents demonstrating increasing angst, restiveness, rage and rebellion on one end of the behavioural spectrum, and withdrawing into a shell in a depressed, pensive state on the other end. Unfortunately, the nature of the problem does not allow adequate data on its extent that would mandate urgent attention from the level of the family to the government, and seek the involvement of experts as well as the private sector. The focus should be on developing individuals not just through the school and college years, but also through the initial stages of careers, with active involvement of qualified counsellors and psychologists.
Channelling energies through activities including sports, vocational guidance, skill and talent development, workshops on building mental resilience, stressing failure as a learning, and teaching the values of living to view the world positively need to be taken up. How the problem is tackled will determine the quality of an entire generation of the world’s largest workforce. India’s youngsters deserve their own ‘invictus moment’.