Helping children during exams season

Although most parents tend to dismiss exam stress as normative, mental and emotional well-being professionals warn that persistent academic stress and anxiety especially in the new age of ubiquitous social media has grave short and long-term implications for children’s physical and mental health write Kiran Balimane, Cynthia John & Mini P. In every school student’s annual school calendar, February-March are high-stress red-marked months. This is the time when the country’s 57 national and state exam boards conduct their class X and XII school-leaving board examinations, and all 1.4 million primary-secondary schools countrywide their final annual exam. Add to them, highly competitive public exams such as the annual IIT-JEE which determines entry into the country’s 23 IITs; the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) that decides entry into 751 medical colleges and Common University Entrance Test (CUET) for admission into 56 Central universities. The pressure of scoring high marks/grades in these exams particularly school-leaving board and public competitive exams which determine entry into the country’s few high-quality undergraduate colleges pushes a rising number of teens over the edge. Most experience high levels of stress and anxiety, some plunge into depression and a few unable to cope with fear of failure take the extreme step of ending their lives by suicide. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), an estimated 2,500 children and youth commit suicide every year. Over the past seven years (2014-2020), 12,582 students have taken the extreme step of ending their young lives by suicide because of examination stress and fear of failure. A recent 2022 survey conducted by the Delhi-based National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) indicates that 80 percent of classes IX-XII students suffer high anxiety during these months. Although most parents tend to dismiss exam stress as normative, mental and emotional well-being professionals warn that persistent academic stress and anxiety especially in the new age of ubiquitous social media, has grave short and long-term implications for children’s physical and mental health. “Generally, exam stress is perceived as situational; something that will fade away after the exam. This is not always the case. Some children experience severe psychological and physiological changes — cognitive and neurobiological. It’s important for parents to acknowledge and understand the adverse physical and psychological effects of exam stress on children, so they can proactively take measures to support them,” says Dr. Venkatesh Babu, consultant psychiatrist and founder of Compathy Health, a Bengaluru-based healthcare company. For this exams season, PW interviewed healthcare professionals and counselors to share information on the adverse physical and psychological effects of exam stress upon children and effective ways to cope with it. Neurobiological effects According to Dr. Venkatesh Babu, exam/academic stress impacts regions of the neurobiological system to aggravate anxiety, often resulting in memory loss and poor decision-making. According to him, the major effects of exam stress on the neurobiological system are: Amygdala activation. The amygdala is a part of the brain associated with emotion. During the exam season, the amygdala becomes activated, triggering release of stress hormones…