Schools across India need to consider opening a position of Counsellor with whom students can talk about anything- life at home, bullying, struggles, crushes, alcohol, drugs, sex, gender identities. Anything. They need a professional who knows what the students are dealing with and guides them through it.

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Students share things if you open up to them. But more often than not, most teachers aren't qualified professionals in psychology, psychiatry and psychoanalysis to help them properly.

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Students fear their trauma might end up becoming staffroom gossip and so they don't open up. They fear that the administration might look at them differently, their friends might treat them like outcastes and it can all become easily overwhelming. Even for an adult. The fear of being judged and stereotypes against mental health do not help.

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And so students cut their forearms when hurt. They cry at nights alone and scared, and then come up to school next morning like nothing happened. The presence of bullies in school corridors does not help. Even after all the measures taken against bullying by schools, it happens and goes unreported everyday.

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Worse, they start finding secret stashes of alcohol, start smoking hukkas and cigarettes and sometimes start abusing drugs very early in life. Students are always handy with getting their hands on things they are not supposed to have. They do everything except the one thing they should have done- talk.

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Why?

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They need an outlet. A true sponge for their fears and failures. Some good advice. A soundboard. Someone who will not rat them out. Someone whom they trust to be on their side and not school's, not management, not teachers, not their family and not their friends.

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They need someone who knows how to deal with so much trauma and still stay sane because honestly, I am not well-equipped. When students break down in front me, I break down a little and in that moment, it's their turn to break down. Not mine. I need to be the stronger person in the room. I'm not. I am too emotional. Too involved. Too much of a mess myself to help them even if, being an adult, I hide it well. I just want to hug them and make it alright. But that can't always be done. Students say hurtful things when they are hurting and you've got to be able to understand the cause and stay calm when insults are being hurled to your face which is very difficult.

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Every teacher can help to a certain degree, keep up with the students' life but it takes its toll on us as well. Our mental health is affected by this all. We are only human trying to do a job that we are not professionally trained for. We try from our experience of life. But how far can it help?

We have read child psychology but that doesn't prepare us for professional treatment at all. It prepares us enough to recognise the symptoms of neglect, hurt and trauma so we can report incidences that need attention.

Even so, I believe sincere mandatory workshops need to be arranged for teachers and students alike, because a sound mental health is required both ways for a better exchange of ideas and information and only in that environment can knowledge truly be imparted.

Social media and the fake life that it is forcing each one of us to live is not helping the cause either.

Please, its not even debatable that a Counsellor should be there in each school, if not two. Some schools have this facility but most do not. I believe we need to start at the very beginning for mental health to be really understood across the country. Nowhere better or safer than a school.