Skip to main content

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   





















Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Burari Deaths: The Psychopathology of Lalit, a Biopsychosocial Perspective

Pankhudi Narayan Blogpost 1  TW: Death, mentions of suicide.         On July 1st of 2018, eleven members of a family were found dead in their shared home in the Burari area of Delhi. The deaths seemed to be fashioned in a ritualistic manner and evidence suggested that the family members were willing participants. This was the Bhatia family, a typical middle-class Indian joint family. Bhopal Singh who had passed away and his wife Narayani Devi formed the older generations of the family and were Lalith’s parents. The most compelling evidence in the uncovering of the events that led to the death of an entire family was provided by eleven diaries found by authorities. The diaries described the events that transpired before the deaths, discussing a ritual that needed to be conducted and the diary entries were corroborated by the post mortem findings as the accounts were found to be consistent with injuries (Yadav et al., 2021). It was uncovered that Lalit, a member of the family who was the

Disorderly Delvian: A Deep Dive into "Anna Delvey" through the Lens of NPD

       A markedly thick accent, a mop of blonde hair, a magical array of unimaginably expensive clothing, and an air of calculated mystery mesh uncomfortably together to invent Anna Delvey, the centre of Netflix’s appropriately named documentary/drama series, “Inventing Anna”. This series tells or rather retells the fascinating story of how one woman deceived the creme de la creme of New York society as well as some prestigious financial institutions under the guise that she was a wealthy heiress from Germany. The series follows a journalist, Vivian Kent, as she tries to uncover the carefully constructed web of lies Anna spun around high society after her arrest, heavily interspersed by flashbacks, present-day court hearings, and interviews with the enigma herself (Shondaland, 2022). Anna as a character, infused with a troubling reality and a dramatised narrative, presents an interesting scope to study the symptomatology of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as presented in her behaviou

Made in Heaven: An analysis of Faiza Naqvi

Vyoma Vijai Blog Post 3 ‘Made in Heaven’ is a popular Indian web series created by Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kaagti and was launched in March 2018. The show gained a lot of attention in the first few days of it coming out. It is a bold show that focuses on marriage practices in the rich and elite class of Delhi. The show focuses on the social issues and practices that are often not spoken of or are kept closeted. These issues include homosexuality, dowry, molestation and other questionable Indian customs. The story follows the lives of multiple characters at the same time. The two most important characters are Tara and Karan who run a wedding planning agency.   Tara is married to a rich industrialist whose name is Adil and her best friend in the show is Faiza, played by Kalki Koechlin. This essay analyses Faiza’s character and her role in this web series. Faiza is a complex character to understand. Her actions make it hard for the viewers to decide whether they l