Self-harm a rising trend among distressed adolescents and young adults in India, finds TISS Mumbai helpline’s data | Mumbai News
Mumbai: Among adolescents and young adults, self-harm is increasingly becoming a language of pain—an expression of betrayal, distress and anxiety when words fall short. It is not always a wish to die, counsellors say, but an urgent attempt to feel heard, to release emotions that have nowhere else to go.Members of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ helpline iCALL field action project, speaking to the media, point to an uncomfortable truth: for many young callers, anxiety does not originate in the outside world but within the home. Dysfunctional family environments, they say, remain the most common and enduring trigger.“Self-harm is a rising trend in India,” said Dr Aparna Joshi, assistant professor at the School of Human Ecology and project director of iCALL and Sukoon at TISS. “It is not a way to end life, but a way to end pain — to manage overwhelming emotions. For many, it becomes a form of communication or venting, offering intense, if temporary, relief and a way of coping, although not helpful or constructive. Young individuals need to be supported in finding helpful and constructive ways of coping with their life difficulties”.Self-harm can take many forms—cutting, burning, or repeatedly injuring oneself — and is often viewed as part of a continuum that can, in some cases, edge towards suicidal behaviour. The concerns that surface alongside it are familiar and complex: academic pressure, struggles with identity and gender, strained relationships, trauma, and persistent emotional distress.Data from iCALL’s CHAMPS helpline supported by UNICEF reflect this landscape. The largest share of callers reach out for emotional distress (39.37%), followed by non-suicidal self-injury (9.79%), relationship issues (5.68%), suicidal ideation (3.40%), education and career-related stress (3.05%), and experiences of violence (3.32%). Together, they sketch a portrait of young lives grappling not just with external expectations, but with unresolved pain closer to home.Over the past three years, patterns in distress have traced an uneven map of the country. The CHAMPS helpline received the highest number of calls from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. Yet the data also carries its silences: Of the 27,706 genuine calls logged, nearly 13,000 callers chose not to disclose where they were calling from.A similar geography — and reticence — emerges on Reyou, the suicide prevention chat-line supported by Zoomcares and Mariwala Health Initiative that has assisted more than 10,000 young individuals in distress. Here, most users reached out from Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, West Bengal and Karnataka, seeking help in typed words rather than spoken ones.
