The recent adversity at Loni Medical College, where a second-year MD Paediatrics student ostensibly took his own life, has jolted the medical community. The succeeding deferment of the Head of Department has only added to the debate on answerability, authority dynamics, and the culture of mentorship within medical institutes.
While the loss of a young doctor is heart wrenching, it also compels us to resist deeper challenges that often remain untold in medical campuses across the country.
The Hidden Burden of Medical Training
Becoming a doctor is not just an academic milestone—it is a destination filled with enormous pressure, restlessness nights, and psychological exhaustion. For postgraduate students, expectations grow even higher. Long hours, high-stakes authorities, and the impending shadow of senior authority develop an environment where errors are not just rectified but often penalized.
The incident at Loni is not a lone incident. It highlights a structural issue where students are left to quietly endure indignity, torments, and overwhelming pressure.
Mentorship vs. Authority
A Head of Department should be more than an administrator. The responsibility is not just about teaching medicine but about shaping future doctors with sympathy and pliability. True mentorship means commanding, helping, and elevating students—not instilling pressure.
When mentorship turns into autocratic control, the white coat that personifies healing becomes a cape of quietness and challenges. The suspension of the HoD should serve as a reminder that accountability and answerability is not optional; it is necessary.
Breaking the Silence Around Mental Health
Medical students are coached to safeguard lives, yet they often suffer to save their own mental well-being. Anxiety, burnout, and suicidal thoughts are distressingly common in the medical community. Unluckily, stigma keeps many from speaking out or seeking support.
The Loni incident emphasises the need for vigorous mental health support systems within medical colleges—counsellors, confidential helplines, peer-support groups, and most necessarily, an ecosystem where students feel secure to voice their sufferings.
A Call for Change
This tragedy should not dwindle into the background as another headline. It must function as an urgent call:
✅Institutes must emphasize student welfare over rigid seniority.
✅Mentors must lead with compassion, not intimidation.
✅Peers must look out for one another, shaking the culture of quietness.
✅Policymakers must enforce stringent measures against harassment while making mental health protection available in every medical college.
Healing the Healers
The young doctor at Loni will never return, but his story must not be forgotten. His passing should ignite reform—where every medical student feels valued, supported, and protected. Medicine is about healing; mentorship in medicine must reflect the same compassion.
Because if we fail to protect our future healers, we fail the very foundation of healthcare itself.