Academic Pressure Causing Mental Health Issues: IIT-Bombay Survey

Survey by IIT Bombay student magazine finds that 72.6 percent of respondents have experienced mental health issues.

Image used for representation.

(Photo: Erum Gour/The Quint)

A recent in-campus survey by IIT Bombay’s student magazine, Insight, found that a massive 72.6 percent of respondents have experienced mental health issues.

The survey published on 10 October 2020 was answered by 450 students across different disciplines. 93 percent of the students who participated in the survey considered mental health problems as real psychological problems and 83 percent felt that mental health problems are common in IIT Bombay.

The report read, “According to the National Mental Health Survey 2015-16, which was conducted across 12 states, the prevalence of mental morbidity in the surveyed population of 35000 was 13.7%. This shows how starkly concentrated this issue is in academic institutions, or at least in IIT Bombay.”

Among the 72.6 percent students who have had a brush with mental health problems, over 70 percent attributed the cause to academic pressure. The second most common cause is deciding their future profession. Family and relationship problems were the third more common reason for mental health problems among the students.

The report further highlighted that just 55.4 percent of those affected sought help to tackle their problem. The remaining 44.6 percent of students who did not seek intervention attributed their decision to reasons like “fear of judgement, scepticism about their effectiveness and lack of need for external intervention”.

Based on the findings, the report added that, “The proportion of the students currently suffering from a mental disorder is the most crucial and requires active intervention. More so is the need to highlight the support systems in the institute and otherwise, and through the responses shared, scrutinise their efficacy.”