India, May 20 -- There is a silence that is louder than any noise: the silence of a nation hanging by a thread, playing along with its day-to-day life highs and lows. Now that we confidently march through the 21st century with all its scientific and technological achievements, a more hidden and creeping crisis lies beneath. It is not also spoken about in boardrooms, aired on primetime headlines. But it is everywhere - in every classroom, every bedroom, and in the light emitted by millions of phone screens. The youth mental health crisis is more than a public health crisis. It is an accounting of our philosophy, our sociology, and our ethics.

To grasp the magnitude of this affliction, one must move beyond clinical definitions and statisti...