Summary: India loses more than 10,000 children and adolescents to suicide every year, a crisis shaped by complex and interconnected factors, from family and academic pressures to mental health and wider social conditions. Yet gaps in data, evidence and implementation make prevention challenging. 10K2Zero was created to help bring that 10,000 to zero. A collaborative initiative of Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy (CMHLP), Indian Law Society, Pune, and Quicksand Design Studio, it aims to bring together the people and organisations working on child and adolescent suicide prevention, connect existing efforts, identify gaps and strengthen action.
In India, more than 10,000 children and adolescents under the age of 18 die by suicide every year.
The scale of this crisis became particularly stark in 2020, when reported suicides among children and adolescents rose by 19% from 9,613 in 2019 to 11,396. Since then, the number has consistently remained above 10,000 every year. India's suicide rate among children and adolescents is also nearly twice the global rate: 10 (for children aged 14 to 18) per 100,000 compared with 3.85 globally.
What is driving the crisis?
Suicide is rarely the result of one event or one condition. Research consistently points to an interplay of individual, interpersonal, social and environmental factors. A recent scoping review of psychological autopsy studies on adolescent suicide identified factors ranging from mental health conditions, substance use and self-harm to abuse, academic failure, interpersonal conflicts, media influence, access to lethal means and lack of mental health support. The authors emphasise that these factors can interact and shape a child’s experience in complex and interconnected ways.
Research focused specifically on India tells a similar story. A 2024 scoping review identified mental health problems, traumatic family experiences, academic stress, violence, social and lifestyle factors, economic distress and relationship difficulties among the factors associated with adolescent suicide.
Yet the way suicide is recorded can make this complexity difficult to see.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) assigns a reported cause to each suicide, but this does not necessarily capture the multiple circumstances that may have contributed to a death. In 2024, for children and adolescents below 18, 1,975 deaths were classified under “other causes” and 1,395 under “causes not known”. Together, these categories account for around 30% of all reported suicides in this age group.
That is a significant gap in our understanding. If we do not know what was happening in the lives of nearly one in three children who died by suicide, it becomes much harder to design prevention efforts that respond to the realities they were experiencing.
The data we do have, however, offer important clues.
In 2024, “family problems” were the most frequently recorded cause of suicide among children and adolescents, followed by “other causes,” “love affairs,” “illness” and “examination failure.”
These categories should not be interpreted as isolated explanations. A family conflict, academic setback or relationship difficulty may be the immediate circumstance recorded after a death, while a much wider set of experiences may have shaped a child's vulnerability over time.
Girls face a distinct risk
There is another striking pattern in the data.
Across most age groups in India, more men and boys die by suicide than women and girls. Children and adolescents below 18 are the notable exception, where girls consistently account for more suicide deaths than boys.
In 2024, for example, 6,023 girls below 18 died by suicide compared with 5,151 boys. Research on adolescents aged 14–17 has similarly found that female suicide rates in India were consistently higher than male rates between 2014 and 2019.
This gender difference demands closer attention to the environments in which girls grow up. Gender-based discrimination, restrictive social norms, violence, early marriage, relationship pressures and unequal access to support can shape the risks young girls face.
The data therefore point to the need for prevention approaches that are not only age-specific, but also responsive to gender and the social contexts in which children and adolescents live.
What prevention systems do we have in place
India has taken important steps towards building systems for suicide prevention and mental health. The National Suicide Prevention Strategy provides a national framework for reducing suicide mortality. Other initiatives, including the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK), MANODARPAN and the UMMEED guidelines, address aspects of adolescent health, mental health and wellbeing. Educational institutions have also been directed to strengthen mental health and suicide prevention measures.
But these initiatives do not all have suicide prevention as their primary focus. And even where suicide prevention is explicitly addressed, implementation remains uneven.
The challenge is therefore not simply to create another programme. It is to strengthen the connections between the people, organisations, evidence, policies and interventions that already exist while identifying and addressing what is missing.
This is the context in which 10K2ZERO has emerged.
Bringing the pieces together
10K2ZERO is a collaborative initiative of the Centre for Mental Health Law & Policy (CMHLP), Indian Law Society, Pune, and Quicksand Design Studio. Its goal is straightforward: to bring the number of deaths by suicides among children and adolescents in India from 10,000 to zero.
10K2ZERO ultimately seeks to become a “watering hole” for child and adolescent suicide prevention, a space where researchers, practitioners, policymakers, young people, educators, civil society organisations, funders and others working on the issue can find one another, exchange knowledge, build partnerships and develop solutions.
In this role, 10K2ZERO aims to act as an ecosystem facilitator, helping connect existing efforts, surface gaps, strengthen evidence, support promising interventions and create opportunities for collective action.
Its work is organised around three interconnected areas:
1. Interventions
Developing and adapting evidence-based interventions and tools that address the realities of child and adolescent suicide.
2. Policy and advocacy
Working with policymakers at local, state and national levels to strengthen suicide prevention policies and their implementation.
3. Research and knowledge
Building a stronger evidence base on child and adolescent suicide, including generating research, identifying gaps in existing data and supporting future research efforts.
Changing the narrative means changing the system
The challenge of child and adolescent suicide in India cannot be solved by asking children and adolescents to become more resilient, teachers to do more, or families to simply communicate better.
It requires us to look at the systems surrounding young people and ask how those systems can become safer, more responsive and more connected.
Know more about the 10K2Zero campaign.
Sources
- Soyuz J, Jaihind Jothikaran TA, Sakkir KK, Cherian AV, Ashok L, Chandrasekaran V, Augustin B, Elstin Anbu Raj S. Exploring factors contributing to adolescent suicide using psychological autopsy - A scoping review. PLoS One. 2026 May 27;21(5):e0348014. doi:
- Senapati RE, Jena S, Parida J, Panda A, Patra PK, Pati S, Kaur H, Acharya SK. The patterns, trends and major risk factors of suicide among Indian adolescents - a scoping review. BMC Psychiatry. 2024 Jan 9;24(1):35. doi:
- Arya V, Armstrong G, Tapp C, Onie S, Bandara P, Kumar GA, Spittal M, Page A, Vijayakumar L, Pirkis J, Dandona R. Trends in suicide among adolescents aged 14-17 years in India: 2014-2019. Glob Ment Health (Camb). 2025 Jul 31;12:e90. doi: 10.1017/gmh.2025.10044. PMID: 40895820; PMCID: PMC12394019.
Key Takeaways
- More than 10,000 children and adolescents under 18 die by suicide in India each year, with reported deaths remaining above 10,000 annually since 2020.
- Suicide is complex: mental health, family experiences, academic stress, relationships, violence, social conditions and access to lethal means can interact and shape risk.
- Nearly 30% of reported suicides among under-18s in 2024 were classified as “other causes” or “causes not known,” highlighting major gaps in understanding.
- Girls face a distinct risk: in 2024, 6,023 girls under 18 died by suicide compared with 5,151 boys.
- Prevention requires systems change: existing programmes and policies need stronger implementation and better connections across sectors.
- 10K2ZERO brings the ecosystem together around three areas: evidence-based interventions, policy and advocacy, and research and knowledge — with the goal of moving from 10,000 to zero.
