It usually starts with small things, says Debosmita Baruah. ?Things that we don?t see eye to eye on. Then, it gets bigger, till it finally gets out of hand and becomes a huge issue.? The 19-year-old college student in Calcutta was describing her fights with her boyfriend, which she calls one of the biggest causes of stress in her life. Smita Biswas, 22, of Jadavpur University, says her breakdown came when her failures in school coincided with unrequited love. Biswas recalls that she even sought counselling through a helpline.

Adults may want to dismiss such situations without much thought, for studenthood, by common perception, is that wonderful time of life filled with useless fights, impulsive behaviour, career decisions and realisation of dreams.

But, it transpires that Generation Next is ailing. Almost 60 years after Independence, the youth is supposed to have everything that the earlier generations didn?t ? from economic stability to upward mobility to wonderful career options. With that, however, they also have the easy availability of drugs and satellite images, liberalism, and fast-track lives. Not all of that translates into a beautiful life for our college-goers.

A survey this month tells us that the world of students is plagued by thoughts of underperformance and lacking prospects, the worry of being overweight or underweight, broken relationships and sexual politics, the late-night chats on mobile phones and the Internet, and even smoking marijuana. And such thoughts are definitely not happy thoughts. So much so that for a large part of the youth of cosmopolitan India, life has become a vicious cycle of stress and its fallouts.

Kanika Khandelwal, who teaches psychology at Lady Shri Ram College (LSR) in Delhi, had students complaining about their weight, or inability to concentrate, or being fidgety. Many of these problems were so minor that parents and teachers didn?t quite take them seriously. ?But when we conducted a survey among students in our college, it threw up some unprecedented results,? Khandelwal says. One out of every two students said that mental health was their foremost worry, followed by physical (36 per cent) and sexual health (11 per cent).

Clearly, anxiety levels are increasing among the young. The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore says there has been a 20-per-cent rise in psycho-social and emotional problems among young students across the country in the last decade. ?Families are shrinking and expectations are rising. Youth find it difficult to cope with pressures and they have no safety valve to release the steam,? explains Dr C.R. Chandrashekhar, professor at NIMHANS.

Stressful relationships, careers and expectations weigh heavy on college students, already burdened by concerns of marriage and sex. In Calcutta, a 19-year-old is ostracised by her own family when it is rumoured that she is a lesbian. Another teenager says she?s so stressed managing her relationships at home, with her boyfriend and among her friends that she feels the need for a counsellor. ?For today?s youth, I see relationships as the biggest cause for depression and anxiety-related problems,? says Dr Ashim Chatterjee, psychiatrist with the Mon Foundation in Calcutta.

In the post-MMS era, sex among students is matter-of-fact, and drugs even more so. Ananya Purkayastha, a 19-year-old student of Delhi, says all her friends practise ?responsible sex? with their partners. ?But if the boys don?t use a condom, the girls start taking birth control pills immediately the day after,? she says. A 25-year-old former student of Jadavpur University, who volunteers for an awareness helpline, says that sex is a recurring theme. ?We get frequent calls from women asking about everything from contraceptive methods to how to handle an abortion.?

All this translates into ?the politics of anxiety? ? as social scientist Shiv Vishwanathan terms it. ?This is linked not just to the politics of desire, but other parameters such as mobility and employment,? he says.

The perception that things are worse than generally perceived is growing. Concerned by the LSR survey, Delhi University (DU) decided to extend its scope. Under the aegis of the DU arm, World University Services, students in 14 other colleges and departments in the Capital were surveyed. The answers were tell-tale: young India had little to be cheerful about.

The DU survey found that depression and anxiety plagued almost 40 per cent students, and half the respondents suffered from irregular sleep patterns (48 per cent) and lack of concentration (56 per cent). One in every 10 students had suicidal thoughts, and one in 12 had taken to substance abuse. Their other worries included weight and self-image. Homosexuality was the sex-related issue perceived to be most prevalent, and their major concern in terms of sex-related acts was AIDS.

Lost and found: A still from the film Main Hoon Na which focuses on the dilemmas of a confused lot

Sexual promiscuity, substance abuse and dropping out from college are the fallout of this emotional stress, say psychologists. An alarming result of the survey was the percentage of respondents who had suicidal thoughts. Dr Mohan Issac of NIMHANS says that his institute has been monitoring suicide rates in Bangalore, and that the maximum suicide cases are of persons in the age group of 15 to 25 years. The cause for this could range from failure in examinations, or a love affair gone wrong, to the unavailability of an addictive substance.

Matters are not helped by modern satellite images. One of the worst pitfalls of television and media is that it often helps youngsters form a negative self-image. In the survey, 38 per cent of the respondents said that their body weight worried them. Psychiatrist Dr Sanjay Chugh, who conducted a workshop on ?Body Image? for DU students following the survey, pointed out that 70- 80 per cent of his patients have distortions in self- image, medically termed Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). BDD, in turn, gives rise to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

Khandelwal says many of her students take up smoking, believing in the myth that puffing helps reduce weight. Yet others, says Dr Chatterjee, take to substances with the idea of experimenting. ?It?s actually a vicious cycle,? he says. The need for substance finally translates into the need for fast money, which in turn leads to instant gratification. ?They want money, and desire fulfilment is of primary importance to them. Adding to their woes in information without context at the click of a mouse, which also leads to anxiety,? says Vishwanathan.

But anxiety, often, has no clear manifestation. Sometimes, the signs of such stress are so subtle that they are not easily detected, leading to further complications. ?We have cases of young people coming in with anxiety disorders, where even a thorough check-up reveals no problems. However, they keep showing symptoms such as breathlessness, palpitation and dry throat,? says Dr Chatterjee. Only after much coaxing do the real reasons for such symptoms tumble out, and in most cases, they are caused by stressful relationships.

Strained relations would also mean that channels of communication are often blocked. But, while many youngsters say they cannot connect with their parents and talk out their problems with them, a few tend to seek solace among nameless, faceless identities on the Internet. But even that brings little comfort. Meghna Dass of Calcutta is already disillusioned. ?People lie, they make stupid assumptions about each other and it finally turns out to be a useless, muddled way of interacting,? she says. Not to mention the deprivation of sleep that such late-night chats cause, leading to lack of concentration and stress.

There?s hope yet. Most youngsters in Calcutta say that even though they do not open up to their parents, they discuss ?everything under the sun? with their peer group, and that helps them find answers. In Bangalore, NIMHANS is conducting several two-week-long programmes on mental health for college teachers to help them counsel their students better. DU?s survey has prompted them to organise a seminar where suicidal tendencies, healthy eating, sexual habits and body disorders were discussed.

As for Debosmita, she has since kissed and made up with her boyfriend, while Smita has gone on to do well academically. But they are among the lucky few.