Students Are Stressed, But Few Turn To Counsellors, Survey Exposes The Well-being Gap

What a IC3 well-being survey reveals about the silence before a student crisis

On September 16, a 20-year-old BSc student died at his hostel on the Tezpur University campus. Police said the death is being investigated and that a diary was recovered, though its contents have not been disclosed.

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Days earlier, in the Guwahati's Khetri area, the death of a 17-year-old Class 11 student, initially probed as a case of possible foul play, was reclassified by police as suspected self-harm.

Two cases, a fortnight apart, in the same state. Neither is isolated. Government data shows student suicides remain a significant and rising concern across India, prompting renewed attention to what happens in the years before such a loss, long before any single incident makes headlines.

A newly released nationwide study, the Student Well-being Pulse Report 2026 by the IC3 Institute, conducted in collaboration with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), offers a rare, granular look at that period. Rather than working backward from tragedy, it asked over 8,500 students across India, directly, how they were doing.

The picture it paints is not one of a crisis erupting suddenly. It is one of gradual erosion, largely unnoticed by the adults around them.

The report's most striking finding is not that students are stressed, that surprises no one, but how they respond to it.

Asked who they turn to when struggling, 64% said they simply deal with it themselves. Friends came next (49%), then family (44%). School counsellors were named by just 6% of students, one in sixteen. Only 2% said they would approach a therapist.

Yet the same students do not distrust professional help. More than half, 52%, said they believe counselling is useful. The gap between the two figures is the real story.

"That is actually one of the strongest findings of the report," said Neha Bahl, Executive Director of the IC3 Institute, who worked closely on the study. "The data challenges the assumption that this is simply a stigma problem. There is a striking gap between believing that counselling can help and actually having the willingness, or the ability, to access it."

Bahl argues the question institutions should be asking is not how to reduce stigma around the word "counsellor," but something more basic. "Does every student in every school or college know at least one adult they can go to when things aren't okay?"

In the survey, a majority of students said they could not confidently name such an adult, a pattern Bahl said she would expect to see repeated "in any part of the country," not just in one state or city.

The report bears out that concern with numbers of its own: the share of students who say they have a trusted adult to talk to declines steadily through the senior years of school, precisely the period, Bahl noted, "when students actually need the support the most."

The report is careful not to pin any single tragedy on one cause. Academic pressure and uncertainty about the future are named by over half of students as their dominant stressors.

Bahl framed this as cumulative rather than sudden. "Student stress really begins to build over time. It's not that stress will suddenly appear in Grade 11 or 12 or in the first year of university, it can start as early as Grade 6 or 7."

The data backs her up. Across every positive emotion the survey tracked, including happiness, confidence, motivation and calm, scores fall steadily through the school years.

Markers of anxiety, loneliness and low energy rise over the same period. By the final year of school, fewer than half of students rate their overall mental well-being as high, and a majority report being dissatisfied with school life.

Sleep follows the same pattern: a majority of students overall get six hours or less, and the figure worsens further among senior students.

The report's central recommendation is structural: institutions need to stop treating mental health support as something that activates only once a student is visibly in trouble.

Bahl described a three-tier framework the IC3 Institute is encouraging schools and colleges to adopt. "The first tier is universal prevention. Well-being isn't just for those in distress, it has to be built into the culture, into the fabric of the institution," she said, pointing to social-emotional learning, healthy sleep and screen habits, and protected time for extracurricular activities as examples.

Crucially, she said, this tier is as much about training teachers, wardens and non-teaching staff as it is about students. "We call these people first responders. They're not providing the solution, but they are the first ones to notice an early sign and respond."

The second tier is targeted support for identifiable at-risk groups, such as exam-anxiety cohorts, peer-support networks and students navigating difficult personal circumstances.

The third and final tier, intensive support, is reserved for acute distress requiring referral to external therapists or psychiatrists. "This tier three cannot be the entire system," Bahl said. "If we only act when a student reaches a real crisis, we've already missed many opportunities for early support."

Asked which stakeholder bears the greatest responsibility for change, friends, families, hostel wardens, institutions or policymakers, Bahl declined to single one out.

"The answer isn't that there is one particular stakeholder. It's a shared responsibility," she said, before mapping out a role for each: policy-level standards on counsellor access; institutional leadership embedding well-being into school culture rather than delegating it to one department; teachers, who interact with students daily and are well placed to notice small changes; families, who can either add pressure or ease it; and peers, who are already the first port of call for most students and need the tools, and the confidence, to respond responsibly.

"If a friend is in distress, what is my pathway to support them? Students need the agency to turn a friend confiding in them into active support, rather than something they carry alone."

She was equally firm that academic effort itself is not the problem. "We are not against academic pressure, that's part of the game, part of life as you experience education. The question is how we create support systems so students can navigate these pressures and don't become victims of them."

Reports like this one cannot explain any individual loss. But they map the terrain such losses occur on.

It is a landscape where most students say they would rather manage difficulty alone than ask for help, where trusted adult relationships weaken exactly when they are needed most, and where the gap between believing support works and actually using it remains wide.

The work the report calls for happens well before any crisis point: in morning circles, in teachers trained to notice a quiet shift in a student's mood, and in support systems visible and approachable enough that students actually choose to use them.