Why creating safe spaces for young India is crucial

Before the word, there was music.

Before anyone spoke about anxiety, depression, failure, or the pressures of growing up, the sarod filled the room at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre during THE WEEK’s Mental Health of Young India Conclave on September 5. Anoop Pande performed a composition by maestro Ustad Vilayat Khan. For a few minutes, the noise that often surrounds young lives—notifications, expectations, examinations, comparisons and the pressure to keep up—seemed to fade away. It was an unusual way to begin a conversation on mental health, but perhaps a fitting one.

The conclave’s theme—Healthy Young Mind, Healthy India—was not simply about illnesses, diagnoses or treatment. Rather, it was about everything that comes before a young person reaches that point—the ability to express, the confidence to ask for help, the freedom to fail, the importance of being heard and the need for adults to create spaces where young people do not feel compelled to hide what they are going through. At the heart of the day’s conversations was a deceptively simple question: what would it take for a young person to feel safe to say, ‘I am not okay’?

For Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel, part of the answer lies in ensuring that support reaches young people before a crisis. Patel spoke about the government’s efforts to move mental health care beyond treatment and towards prevention.

But prevention is easier said than done, as mental health struggles often begin quietly. They show up subtly, say, in a child who stops raising the hand in class, a teenager who withdraws from friends, a student who cannot sleep before an exam or a young person who learns to smile even while struggling. Sometimes, they can also begin with something as seemingly ordinary as insecurity.

Miss Universe India 2026 Kaziah Liz Mejo knows what that feels like. As a child, she struggled with insecurities about her appearance and would instinctively search for the nearest corner to disappear into whenever she entered a room. She was conscious of what she saw as her flaws, from her thick, curly hair to her dusky complexion. The criticism she encountered gradually became an internal voice, telling her she was not good enough. So she decided to challenge that voice and build self confidence. Today, the 19-year-old is balancing law school with the demands of preparing for the Miss Universe pageant later this year, where she will represent India.

But her idea of confidence is not about being the most beautiful person in the room. It is about presence, energy and the ability to believe in yourself before anyone else does. The crown remains the goal, but it is no longer the only measure of success. Nor is she deterred by mistakes or failure. “Mistakes are just a part of your story. It is not your entire story,” said Mejo.

That idea that a person is not defined by one moment found an unexpected expression through technology. A virtual reality session, designed to help students understand mental health struggles, was inaugurated by Mejo. Developed by LumeXR, the immersive experience allowed participants to step into simulated situations linked to stress, anxiety, depression and social isolation, offering them a glimpse of how such experiences can affect the brain and behaviour. Savio Menifer, founder and head of technology at LumeXR, guided Mejo and a student from the audience through the experience. For students accustomed to hearing about mental health through textbooks, lectures and awareness campaigns, the experience sought to make something invisible a little easier to understand.

Neurosurgeon and author Dr Mazda Turel took the conversation towards the brain itself. The brain’s ability to change and learn, he explained, is also a reminder that people are not permanently defined by their past experiences. That is particularly relevant when young people are taught to fear failure.

From failure, the conversation moved to difference. Dr Ennampadi S. Krishnamoorthy, recipient of the President’s Medal of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, asked the audience to reconsider the way society looks at neurodivergence. “It is not a disease. It is just a different way of being human,” said the founder of Buddhi Clinic.

Neurodiversity, he explained, represents the natural variation between human brains, with neurodivergent people possessing different strengths, challenges and needs. He spoke about what is sometimes described as a spiky profile—a person who may struggle with tasks that others find easy, while displaying extraordinary ability in another area. His cited the example of a teenager who struggled with school and sensory issues but was exceptionally gifted in mathematics. He eventually went to an Ivy League university and became a startup CEO.

The danger, said Krishnamoorthy, was when a difficulty became a child’s identity. Instead of repeatedly telling neurodivergent children what they cannot do, educational systems need to recognise what they can do. Masking difficulties, he warned, can eventually lead to stress and burnout. At the same time, he cautioned against the growing tendency to self-diagnose conditions such as ADHD or autism. Proper assessment, he stressed, remains essential.

But even the best understanding of a child can mean little if the adults around them are not listening. Dr Eesha Sharma, associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NIMHANS, spoke about recognising when ordinary distress begins to interfere with everyday life. Constant worry, unease, difficulty coping with school or college and an inability to manage routine responsibilities can be signs that professional support is needed, she said.

For Dr Neeta Bali, director at MVN group of schools, much of the pressure comes from the environment children grow up in. Schools, she said, need to move beyond celebrating only toppers and create systems that identify struggling children early. Teachers need to recognise and refer students to counsellors, while parents must also learn to accept professional support instead of remaining in denial.

Professor Gayatri Prabhu, director, Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, highlighted another pressure that has become increasingly familiar to young people: the expectation that they should have their entire lives figured out before they have had the chance to discover themselves. Educational institutions, she argued, should allow young people greater space to explore their identities, interests and futures instead of demanding certainty from them too early.

Awareness, however, is only meaningful if support is actually available. Dr Amit Malik, founder and CEO of Amaha, argued that stigma is only one barrier stopping young people from seeking care. They also need an understanding adult, a secure environment and financial access to professional support. Social media, he said, can amplify comparison, body-image concerns and sleep problems, but it should not be treated as the sole cause of burnout. The larger intervention needs to begin much earlier through awareness, resilience building and a change in the way adults approach children and their expectations.

Perhaps the most basic intervention discussed during the day was also the one most easily overlooked—listening. Dr K.S. Meena, professor and head, mental health education, NIMHANS, said children must feel safe enough to speak without fear of being dismissed or judged. “It is very important for us to validate the courage of the child,” she said.

Kalpana D. Kumar, founder and director of KARE Therapy Center, Chennai, argued that mental health conversations must be normalised in schools, including difficult conversations around substance abuse and sexual abuse. “Being prepared for handling the future as educators and parents is very important,” she said. But she also questioned whether the education system itself is equipped for the role it is being asked to play. “The system as such needs to really wake up,” she said, pointing to the need for teachers to have the training and resources required to make inclusive education work.

Lavina Nanda, head of developmental services at Children First, offered another lesson in what adults should do when a child is struggling. Sometimes, the first response should not be a solution. Before we jump into solving the child’s problem, she said, adults should first acknowledge what the child may be feeling. And sometimes, understanding a child means entering their world rather than constantly asking them to enter ours. That is where play comes in. Nanda called play the occupation of a child, arguing that it should not be reduced to an extracurricular activity.

But the young hardly step out to play these days, with most living cocooned lives that run on algorithms. And that comes with its own set of problems. Constant scrolling and hyperconnectivity, warned Dr Abhishek Banga, counsellor with the Delhi government’s department of women and child development, might offer young people immediate gratification but can gradually affect attention, emotional stability and self-esteem. It may also affect the development of empathy among adolescents, he said. He attributed compulsive scrolling partly to the constant novelty of changing content. “That novelty creates and fosters sensation-seeking. And on the basis of that, it creates a dopamine hit in the brain,” he said.

But perhaps his strongest warning was directed at the way young people increasingly use social media for medical and psychological information. He stressed that symptoms alone do not constitute a diagnosis and that trained mental health professionals are needed. His advice was simple: exercise every day, have phone-free family time for a couple of hours and avoid phones for at least an hour before bedtime.

By the end of the day, the discussion had travelled a long way from the sarod that opened it, bringing in policy and technology, neuroscience and neurodivergence, ambition and failure, social media and school pressure. But beneath all those subjects ran the same thread: a young person’s mental health is rarely shaped by one thing; there is no one size fits all. Perhaps, that is what makes the conversation around mental health of the young so difficult. Nonetheless, it is time to speak up. And so, we begin.

Centre’s attention

By Kanu Sarda

UNION MINISTER OF STATE for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel said that the government’s mental health push is designed to cover the full continuum of care, from prevention and wellness promotion to early identification, intervention, rehabilitation and community-based support.

It has strengthened interventions through the National Health Mission’s adolescent health programme. Adolescent-friendly clinics at district hospitals, peer education initiatives and adolescent health and wellness days provide young people with spaces to discuss physical and emotional concerns.

The School Health and Wellness Programme, jointly implemented by the ministries of health and family welfare and education, is geared towards making conversations around stress, emotions and healthy behaviour part of everyday education rather than something addressed only during a crisis.

The Manodarpan initiative intends to provide students, teachers and parents access to resources and support for dealing with emotional and psychological concerns.

At the community level, mental health care has been incorporated into a package of services available through Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, helping extend basic mental health support beyond specialised hospitals and into primary health care settings.

Tele-MANAS has emerged as a critical access point for those who may not be ready to seek help in person. Launched in 2022, the national programme offers confidential support over the phone. Patel said it has already handled 45 lakh calls, with the young seeking help for concerns like examination anxiety, relationships and depression.

Doctor’s advice

By Kanu Sarda

LIVING LONGER while keeping the mind sharp does not necessarily require complicated interventions, according to neurosurgeon and author Dr Mazda Turel. His prescription is straightforward: exercise, eat well, sleep adequately, practise mindfulness, spend time in nature and, above all, remain adaptable.

Turel emphasised the brain’s remarkable ability to change and learn throughout life. Neurogenesis—the formation of new neurons—contributes to its ability to remain healthy and adaptable. “The brain’s adaptability is a beautiful thing,” he said. He stressed that improving oneself is less about innate brilliance and more about effort and diligence.

He also highlighted the brain’s enormous energy demands and capacity. Although it accounts for only a small proportion of body weight, the brain, with an estimated 80-100 billion neurons, consumes roughly 20-25 per cent of the body’s energy.

According to Turel, maintaining brain health is about changing how we respond to setbacks. “Don’t think of your mistakes as mistakes. Think of them as data,” he said. Instead of allowing failure to become a source of self-doubt, treat it as information that can help you adapt and improve.

While discussing the brain’s extraordinary learning capacity during childhood, when people can rapidly learn languages and skills, Turel said the ability to learn and adapt does not disappear with age.

His broader message—that keeping the brain young requires an active engagement with life—comes with a reminder not to become consumed by the pressures of life: “Never take life very seriously.”

For Turel, longevity is therefore not merely about adding years to life, but preserving the ability to think, learn and adapt along the way.

Pageantry and pressure

By Kanu Sarda

MISS UNIVERSE INDIA 2026 Kaziah Liz Mejo recalls a time when she would enter a room looking for the nearest corner because she did not want to be noticed. As a child, she focused more on what she considered her flaws than her strengths.

The 19-year-old’s transformation began when she decided to challenge that inner voice. “I was the least confident person you would have met,” she said. At first, she had to repeatedly tell herself that she was the best—until she began to believe it.

“Confidence is the most expensive thing you can wear,” she said. Chasing a dream, she added, requires the willingness to believe in yourself even before others do. Her own journey has taught her that opportunities often come with pressure, but pressure does not have to become fear.

Instead of asking herself how she will balance law school, classical dance, music and pageantry, she chooses to look at it differently: she has been given an opportunity, so why shouldn’t she be able to make it work?

Her experience at Miss International in 2025 also changed how she looks at success. Finishing as first runner-up, just a point from winning, initially felt like failure. But it taught her that giving 100 per cent is not synonymous with winning. It is about giving your best and being able to walk away knowing you gave it everything.

For Mejo, dreams are therefore not just about the destination. They are about having the courage to start, the confidence to keep going and the resilience to continue even when the outcome is not what you had imagined.

And as she chases the Miss Universe crown, she carries one belief with her: a setback may become part of your story, but it does not have to define it.