Nearly three years ago, Beaconhouse launched a structured wellbeing programme across its school network, a deliberate effort to look beyond academic performance and ask what was actually happening in the lives of students. What counsellors found, once spaces of trust were established, was a feeling of hopelessness, persistent isolation, and, in a significant number of cases, suicidal thoughts. Definitely not what anyone had expected.

The students coming forward were not those already identified as struggling; they were the high achievers, the ones who smiled in the corridors as if all was well. And yet they were the ones who called for help.

The volume and consistency of what counsellors were hearing made clear that a more structured response was needed. Beaconhouse subsequently contextualised and introduced the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), a clinically validated screening tool used in schools and hospitals in 45 countries. Training was developed for counsellors to use it as a framework for open conversations, where students felt comfortable telling the truth.

What emerged from these conversations was a clear pattern. Students were describing exhaustion: from family pressure, from academic expectations, from the daily work of performing a self that everyone else found acceptable. “I used to pray that I would sleep and not wake up the next morning,” one student said. Another: “I’m tired of pretending to be perfect.” These accounts reflect a quieter form of distress, a desire to escape the strain rather than an active wish to die. It points to a structural problem hiding in plain sight: Pakistan’s adolescents are, by every measure, the most connected generation in history, and among the loneliest.

Ask a student how they are. Across every school campus, the answer........

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