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Stress and Suicide: The Peculiar Case of Kota

Gaurika Kumar


Remedial Blog



Kota is an industrial town in the State of Rajasthan, India. It is best known for the tuition centres located here for medical and engineering entrance exams. Students, ranging from ages 13-18, come to Kota from all over India, and stay there for months and years, just preparing for these exams. These coaching centres have been termed “killings fields of education” as the emphasis is given to rote memorisation and learning as the basis for success and failure. The centres advertise the ranks of their top students, while the stories of failure or underachievement are ignored. Amidst this highly competitive and stressful environment, stories of suicides have become such a common occurrence that anti-suicide ceiling fans have been installed in hostels across Kota. This becomes an interesting area of analysis, as the high suicide rates have been contributed to stress. This begs the question of what causes these stressors, and how they contribute to suicidality. To answer this, the blog is going to look at the article Why Stress Turns into Depression? through the case of Kota.

According to an article titled Stressors and Suicidal Behaviour, existence of major depressive disorder in patients is a stronger predictor of suicidal behaviours that the presence of stressors[i] . However, stress can turn into depression as it has several direct and indirect effects on the person’s mental health. As per Why Stress Turns into Depression, stress can affect mood and can cause cognitive changes, sleep disruption, and impaired concentration. The indirect effects, however, are typically assumed to cause depression[ii]. Alice Boyce, the author of the article and a practicing psychiatrist, says, stress can disrupt a person’s healthy coping mechanisms, relationships and routines, and the initial low mood can cause further stress. Together, these factors can build and contribute to depression. Furthermore, stress has biological impacts on the human body as well, which can lead to depression. Chronic stress, as in the case of students studying at Kota, elevates stress hormones, and reduces serotonin and other neurotransmitters, like dopamine, in the brain. When the stress responses are shut off, already susceptible people get more prone to depression.

Annually, there are approximately 15 suicides annually in Kota. Reports generally list the cause of suicide as stress, but fail to mention depression. According to Dr. Surabhi Goyal,
“Kids from small towns and big cities come to Kota. The institutional nature of this coaching hub ends in a classroom. Outside the class, the child is left to his or her own devices. Very few 13 year olds are mentally equipped to handle the responsibility and the cultural shock.”[iii]
In cases of young kids living alone in a new city, suicide rates have been reported to be higher. Furthermore, there are several noted factors that lead to depression specifically in Kota students. These are monotony of the daily activities which involve late nights and early mornings with the day comprising of just rote memorisation and studying, intense competition, high parental and societal expectations, classification of students and monetary compensations based on a hierarchy of grades, and substance abuse. Chronic stress due to these factors, as discussed above, leads to depression, or high susceptibility to acquisition of depression.

Since stress directly isn’t a causal factor for suicidality, depression acts as a mediating factor. A mediator variable accounts for the relation between the predictor and the criterion. They explain how external physical events, in this case stress take on internal psychological significance. Mediators explain how or why such effects occur[iv]. Chronic stress causes depression, which in turn contributes to suicide. Depression can be, therefore, seen as a mediator filling the gap between stress and suicides. The case of Kota, a coaching centre city, is important because of the external factors that have become infamous for contributing to the high suicide rates. The nexus between stress, depression, and suicidality is especially interesting in this case, as it involves lakhs of young aspirational students out of whom thousands report of suicidal tendencies.


[i] Eugene, R. (2014). Stressors and Suicidal Behaviour. “Psychology Today”. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/demystifying-psychiatry/201404/stressors-and-suicidal-behavior


[ii] Alice, B. (2013). Why Stress Turns into Depression. “Psychology Today”. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/in-practice/201303/why-stress-turns-depression


[iii] Aviral, V. (2016). Why Kota Kills. “The Quint”. Retrieved from https://www.thequint.com/news/india/why-kota-kills-7-reasons-behind-student-suicides-in-coaching-town

[iv] Baron R. M., and Kenny D. A. The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research: Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations. “Journal of Personality and Social Psychology”, p. 1176. Retrieved from https://www.sesp.org/files/The%20Moderator-Baron.pdf.

v. Sanjay, S. (2017). Success and suicides: The two sides of the IIT-JEE story reflect the failure of the education system. “Scroll”. Retrieved from
 https://scroll.in/article/837175/success-and-suicides-the-two-sides-of-the-jee-story-reflect-the-failure-of-the-education-system   





















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