Between classrooms and counselling rooms

For professionals being trained to prevent emotional crises, asking who looks after them is becoming an equally important question.

September brings renewed attention to suicide prevention, but the conversation must not stop with those seeking help. It also needs to include the people sitting on the other side of the counselling room: psychologists, therapists, counsellors and students preparing to enter the profession.

Recent research from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) has highlighted that mental health professionals are not immune to the pressures they spend their careers helping others navigate.

Burnout, chronic stress

A review by researchers, including those from NIMHANS, noted that burnout, chronic stress, professional disengagement and limited resources can increase vulnerability among mental health professionals. It also pointed to the need for peer counselling, regular mental health screening and institutional support for those working in the field.

The wider healthcare system has seen similar concerns. Research on healthcare professionals in India has linked long working hours, academic pressure, inadequate rest and difficult working conditions with serious mental health risks.

Against that backdrop, the experiences of psychologists and clinical therapists offer a closer look at what happens behind a therapist’s professional calm.

When a therapist grieves

Khushi Khandelwal, 26, who studied psychology at Shaheed Rajguru College for Applied Sciences for Women, University of Delhi, is now pursuing an MSc in Clinical Psychology while also working in clinical therapy. Her studies and clinical work require her to sit with people dealing with difficult emotions, while she herself has been navigating a deeply painful period.

Her father died last year.

For Khandelwal, the loss came alongside the ordinary demands of being a student and the professional responsibilities of working with people who need emotional support. Grief did not pause her studies. It did not cancel her clinical responsibilities. She still had to attend to the people who came to her for help.

She described the experience as difficult to manage, especially because several responsibilities arrived at the same time.

“Actually, my father died, and after that, managing all these things became very tough for me,” she said while describing the period.

There is a particular difficulty in grieving while working in mental healthcare. A therapist can understand the psychological process of grief, recognise its stages and know why a person might feel overwhelmed. But professional knowledge does not make personal loss painless.

Khandelwal’s experience captures that contradiction. She says, “I am expected to listen when someone else is struggling, even when I am carrying my own emotional weight. I am expected to remain attentive during a session, complete my academic responsibilities and continue building my professional life.”

The expectation that mental health professionals should automatically know how to manage their own emotions can create another layer of pressure.

“Along with study and the profession, managing everything is very difficult,” is how Khandelwal described the challenge.

Her experience does not suggest that therapists are incapable of helping others when they are struggling themselves. Rather, it shows why the idea that mental health professionals are somehow protected from emotional pain needs to be questioned.

Professional distance

For Rajiv (name changed), who is pursuing an MSc in Psychology at AIIMS in the Department of Psychiatry, the challenge looks somewhat different. He acknowledged that working as a therapist can be emotionally challenging, particularly when professionals repeatedly hear stories of trauma, distress and personal crisis. But psychology training also teaches practitioners how to maintain professional boundaries.

“A therapist cannot personally enter every patient’s life,” Rajiv told Patriot.

Rajiv explained that students are taught to remain detached from individual cases so that the patient’s problems do not become the therapist’s own emotional burden. The idea is not to stop caring. It is to learn how to care professionally.

“We are taught how to be detached from these cases, so that we don’t become personally involved,” he explained.

That distinction is central to clinical work. A therapist has to build trust with a patient without turning that relationship into a personal one. They need empathy, but they also need boundaries.

Emotional distance can protect the professional, but it can also be hard to maintain.

“Some cases stay in the mind long after the session ends. A therapist may hear about a person’s trauma, family conflict, loneliness or suicidal thoughts and then have to move immediately to the next appointment,” he said.

Patient’s pain

Rajiv said they learn that a patient’s pain belongs to the patient. Their responsibility is to provide appropriate support, not to carry the entire case home.

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“But even trained professionals can be affected. That is why detachment should not be confused with emotional numbness. A therapist who feels nothing is not necessarily doing better. The challenge is to remain empathetic without becoming overwhelmed,” Rajiv said.

Shipra, 26, who is currently an intern at Vardhaman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital in the department of Psychiatry and specialises in working with patients from marginalised communities through culturally competent therapy, adds another dimension to the conversation, focusing on work-life balance and access to mental healthcare.

“Clinical work can involve back-to-back sessions, sometimes lasting an hour or even longer. The emotional intensity of the work can make the hours feel different from those in many other professions,” Shipra said.

And for professionals who care deeply about accessibility, the working day may not end when the paid sessions do.

Shipra spoke about offering free weekend sessions to people who need help but may not be able to afford regular therapy.

Uneven access

Her decision reflects a major problem in mental healthcare. She says access remains uneven.

“For people from marginalised and economically disadvantaged communities, finding affordable psychological support can be difficult. So, on weekends, I provide free therapy sessions to a few who actually need it; I have shared my Google Form in my Instagram bio. Those who need it can fill the form and describe what they are going through and why they need a free session,” she said.

Shipra wants to help bridge that gap but there is a cost to constantly giving more of oneself.

She said, “Weekends are also when professionals are supposed to rest. When those hours become additional clinical hours, the boundary between work and personal life blurs.”

For psychologists who are still studying while providing therapy, this experience can be different from that of full-time therapists. Full-time practitioners often see a larger volume and wider range of cases, giving them greater exposure to different clinical situations and more opportunity to focus on their areas of specialisation. Rajiv said that with repeated practice, therapists gradually learn how to recognise patterns, manage difficult cases and maintain professional distance. Students, meanwhile, are learning these clinical boundaries while also managing coursework and the demands of entering the profession. For Shipra, whose work focuses on marginalised communities, this also means balancing clinical experience with an interest in making psychological support more accessible.

Recognising emotional distress

India’s suicide-prevention conversation has gained greater attention in recent years. The World Health Organization describes suicide as preventable and stresses the importance of timely, evidence-based support. This year’s World Suicide Prevention Day discussions in India have again focused on recognising emotional distress, breaking silence and encouraging people to seek help early.

But prevention cannot depend only on asking people to seek help. The people providing that help also need systems that let them stay healthy enough to keep going.

Mental health professionals are trained to recognise distress, establish boundaries and help others through crises. Their own wellbeing, however, cannot be left to professional resilience alone. For psychology students entering the field, learning to seek help themselves may need to become as much a part of their training as learning how to help others.