Now, after a day-long seminar, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has realised the grave realities of exam-related stress and recommended the extension of helpline, a 24-hour telephone counselling service, just before the announcement of examination results in June, helped by school principals and counsellors.

To reckon if school education was adding to the complexities of stressful circumstances, CBSE recently organised a symposium on `stress management in schools', bringing together academicians, psychologists, parents, teachers and journalists.

"A man who suffers earlier than usual, suffers greater than usual,'' so goes a Greeksaying. It comes particularly true for children in a nuclear family, because of a stress-inducing environment. ``The stress sets in early these days. As soon as a child starts going to school, he starts getting the common rebuke of `hurry up or else.' The cycle begins with hurrying up in order to catch the school bus, continuing with hurriedly finishing his lunch, finishing the homework, coming home early after play, and then sleeping early to wake up early the next morning,'' says Dr Aruna Broota, clinical psychologist, who also conducts counselling sessions on FM radio.

As one grows up, stress manifests itself in the form of school curricula, exam-based anxiety, parental and peer group expectations and stress induced by psycho-social forces like media and technology. The `others' around a child are a critical factor when shaping a child's psychological make-up. At infancy, he is dependent on the mother. As a school-going child, the teacher becomes his centre of the universe and during adolescence, anage-group most vulnerable to peer pressure, he might just revolt or break down.

But some academics feel that stress is part of our life and could be used positively too. ``The resistance which the earth provide helps a sapling to germinate. Therefore, a student should formulate his own world vision and should not overreach. The emphasis should be on finding meaning in achievements rather than blindly following the rat-race. Also, a family should sit together and discuss what the parents want from their off-springs and vice-versa. This would go a long way in reducing the stress which emanates from placing too high an expectation by both sides,'' avers noted academician J Veeraraghavan.

``When we start optimising just one variable, the system collapses. There is a need for adopting a flexible outlook to resolve the conflicts between variables like innovation and tradition; stability and change; competitiveness and maintaining your sanity,'' observes Dr Etishree Bhati, a clinical psychologist working withthe Delhi Public School, R K Puram. Bhati was an active member of Operation Hope, carried out in some schools of the Capital last year, where her school alone received more than 300 calls, in just three days, related to exam-related anxieties.

``The basic human need to be listened to, lies at the heart of stress. Very often the quantum of stress leads the person to nervous breakdown, psychological disturbances and in rare cases, to the point of no return from where he is unable to retrieve himself,'' explains Bhati.

Some concrete solutions to reduce stress in school life which the academia came up with, after long deliberations and interactions among the participants, came to the fore in the final recommendations of the day-long conference. These are: