Addressing high suicide rates and post-pandemic trauma, legal experts, police, and child rights advocates in Odisha demand systemic reforms, de-stigmatisation, and stronger institutional accountability to safeguard vulnerable children.

Society must be judged by the compassion and dignity it extends to its children when they struggle, Orissa High Court Judge Justice Savitri Ratho declared  on the occasion of Saturday, warning that safeguarding young minds is a shared constitutional, social, and moral duty.

Speaking on India’s Children’s Day at a high-level roundtable co-hosted by the Centre for Child Rights (CCR) at National Law University Odisha (NLUO) and the non-profit Child Rights and You (CRY), Justice Ratho called for a protective ecosystem spanning families, schools, communities, and the State. As Chairperson of the High Court’s Juvenile Justice Committee, she stressed that children must be able to access psychological care without fear of stigma. For juveniles in conflict with the law, she added, institutional responses must prioritise rehabilitation and social reintegration over rigid procedural compliance.

The consultation, titled Mental Health and Children in a Post-Pandemic World: Role of State, Society and Self, convened senior judges, bureaucrats, police officials, academics, and civil society leaders in eastern India. Their central focus was confronting how the COVID-19 pandemic acted as a force multiplier for psychological distress among young people, compounding pre-existing academic pressures, socio-economic vulnerabilities, and digital risks.

Alarming Suicide Data Underscores National Emergency

The urgency of the gathering was anchored in stark national mortality figures. Subhendu Bhattacharjee, Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange at CRY, cited 2024 data from India’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) showing that 31 children and 40 students die by suicide every day across the country.

These figures reflect a deepening school mental health crisis in the world’s most populous nation, where intense competition for university seats and employment routinely overwhelms adolescents. Bhattacharjee warned that the statistics represent an acute emergency requiring both immediate crisis intervention and long-term structural reform.

Globally, the World Health Organization estimates that one in seven adolescents experiences a mental disorder, yet most remain undiagnosed and untreated. In India, the gap between progressive legislation and ground-level execution remains wide. Prof Dr Sarada Prasanna Swain, Professor of Psychiatry and Director-cum-Medical Superintendent at the Mental Health Institute, SCB Medical College in Cuttack, pointed out that nine years after Parliament enacted the landmark Mental Healthcare Act of 2017, mandatory quarterly review meetings have still failed to take off in most districts of Odisha.

Judicial Scrutiny and Campus Accountability

India’s higher judiciary has increasingly stepped in to address institutional apathy toward student distress. Setting the context for the roundtable, Prof Biraj Swain, Chief Minister’s Chair Professor and Director of CCR-NLUO, noted the symbolic convergence of India’s Children’s Day – celebrated annually on November 14 – with the November adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC).

Prof Swain traced how landmark litigation has forced educational institutions and state authorities onto the defensive. She referenced the Supreme Court’s July 2025 ruling in Sukhdeb Saha vs State of Andhra Pradesh, which affirmed mental health as an integral component of the constitutional right to life and issued nationwide guidelines following the death of a medical entrance exam aspirant. She also highlighted Amit Kumar vs Union of India, through which the Supreme Court established a National Task Force on Student Suicide Prevention in Higher Education Institutions to examine systemic stressors such as rigid attendance rules, caste discrimination, and inadequate campus counselling.

At the state level, the Orissa High Court is actively hearing a public interest litigation – SK Sabir Ali, Rabeya Tabassum and Sarita Barpanda vs State of Odisha – in which a division bench recently directed the state government to report on concrete measures taken to promote student mental well-being.

Prof Dr Aqsa Shaikh, a member of the Supreme Court-appointed National Task Force, joined senior judicial figures including Orissa High Court Justices Aditya Kumar Mohapatra, M S Raman, Mruganka Sekhar Sahoo, and V Narasingh to examine how courts and institutions can bridge policy gaps. However, NLUO Registrar Prof Rangin Pallav Tripathy identified a critical flaw in policymaking: educators and school administrators are routinely excluded when suicide prevention plans and health policies are drafted, even though they bear primary responsibility for implementing them on campus.

Civic Space, Primal Fear, and Inter-Sectoral Action

Beyond clinical and educational frameworks, speakers warned that broader social and political conditions directly shape child well-being. Sonal Kapoor, Founder and CEO of the non-profit Protsahan India Foundation, questioned whether children’s rights can be secured when democratic space is narrowing. She pointed to stringent provisions under India’s Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA), arguing that regulatory restrictions on international funding have effectively curtailed grassroots human rights and child protection interventions. Kapoor added that mental health dialogues cannot succeed unless societies confront the “primal fear” and physical insecurity experienced by vulnerable children.

Civil society veterans emphasised that breaking the silence around psychological trauma requires cross-sector cooperation. Jagadananda, Mentor and Co-Founder of the Centre for Youth and Social Development (CYSD), and Shantanu Chakraborty, Chief Executive Officer of Bal Raksha Bharat (Save the Children India), shared field learnings demonstrating that de-stigmatisation and investment in trained mental health professionals yield measurable results.

Senior state officials echoed the need for coordinated governance. Shyni S, Additional Director General of Police heading Odisha Police’s Crime Against Women and Children Wing, alongside Labour Commissioner Indramani Tripathy and Women and Child Development Additional Secretary Sumitra K Pattnaik, outlined ongoing state initiatives and called for deeper partnerships with academia and non-profits. NLUO Vice Chancellor Prof K Vidyullatha Reddy underscored that translating statutory protections from law books into lived reality requires active citizenship alongside state action.

New Research Maps Emerging Threats to Childhood

During the event, delegates unveiled Volume VII, Issue II of NLUO’s flagship journal on child rights, an open-access, peer-reviewed publication produced by CCR – India’s second-oldest university research centre dedicated to children.

The new edition features ten original studies examining contemporary pressures on young people across local and international contexts. Topics include secondary school dropout rates in Odisha, proposals to extend India’s Right to Education mandate from age 14 to 18, secondary trauma among caregivers, and the heightened vulnerability of minors exposed to “sharenting” in the social media influencer economy. The volume also analyses 2020–2024 NCRB data on juvenile offenders and child victims, examines how caste and class identities affect children within the justice system, and reviews the plight of Palestinian children based on findings from the UN-appointed Justice S Muralidhar Commission.

As South Asian nations grapple with the lingering social fallout of the pandemic, participants concluded that preventing youth despair requires moving beyond reactive crisis management. By uniting judicial oversight, community-based child protection, and adequately funded public health systems, stakeholders aim to build a society where every child’s distress is met with empathy rather than silence.

Focus Keyphrase: Children’s mental health in post-pandemic India

Tags: Children’s mental health, student suicides India, National Law University Odisha, Child Rights and You, Orissa High Court, Juvenile Justice, Mental Healthcare Act 2017, UNCRC, child protection, Odisha,