Your Result Is Out. Now Read This Before You Do Anything Else.
A Psychiatrist's Open Letter to Every Student Who Just
Checked Their RBSE Result | ~3000 Words | 12 Min Read
By Dr. Akash Parihar | MD Psychiatry | Asha Wellness
Sanctuary Hospital, Kota
"The number on that result page is not a verdict on
your worth as a human being. It never was. It never will be. But in the next
few hours — and for some of you, the next few days — your brain is going to
tell you otherwise. This article is for that moment."
You just checked your result.
Maybe on rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in. Maybe on
rajresults.nic.in. Maybe on shala darpan, or rajshaladarpan.nic.in, or through
indiaresults.com. Maybe your parent checked it first and called you in with an
expression you couldn't read.
And now you're here. With a number. With a percentage.
With a rank or a grade or a pass or a fail — and with a feeling that is already
filling the room faster than you can process it.
If the result was good: relief, joy, maybe pride — and
underneath all of it, a quiet anxiety about what comes next.
If the result was not what you hoped: something heavier.
Shame, maybe. Disappointment. The specific, crushing weight of having worked
hard and not gotten what you needed. Or the guilt of knowing you didn't work as
hard as you should have. The fear of facing your parents. The voice in your
head that is already constructing a story about what this means about you.
Whatever you're feeling right now — this article is
written for this exact moment.
Because result day is one of the highest-risk mental
health days in the Indian calendar. And nobody is talking about it.
Part 1: What Is Happening in
Your Brain Right Now
Before anything else — the neuroscience. Because
understanding what is happening inside your nervous system right now will help
you respond to it rather than be swept away by it.
If Your Result Was Lower Than
Expected
The moment you saw a result that fell below your
expectations, your brain's amygdala — its threat detection centre —
fired. Not metaphorically. Literally. A neural alarm went off that is
chemically and functionally similar to the alarm that fires when you are
physically threatened.
Your body responded accordingly: cortisol and adrenaline
flooded your system. Your heart rate may have increased. Your thinking may have
narrowed. The future, suddenly, felt only as large as this result.
This is not weakness. This is not overreaction. This is
your nervous system doing exactly what nervous systems evolved to do — responding
to a perceived threat with the full force of its survival machinery.
The problem is that the survival machinery is not
calibrated for nuance. It does not distinguish between "I am in physical
danger" and "I am disappointed with my Class 10 RBSE result." It
responds to both with the same cortisol flood, the same cognitive narrowing,
the same catastrophic future-projection.
The thoughts that arrive in this state — "my life is
over," "I'm a failure," "nothing will work out now,"
"I've let everyone down" — are not accurate assessments of your
future. They are the cognitive output of a brain running on a threat response.
These thoughts are symptoms. Not facts.
If Your Result Was Better Than
Expected
The relief and joy are real and deserve to be felt fully.
But there is a specific psychological risk in the good-result moment that is
less often discussed:
The pressure that arrives with a good result. The sudden
elevation of expectations — your own, your family's, your teachers'. The
anxiety of now having to maintain this. The fear that you peaked too early. The
comparison with peers who scored higher.
If you're feeling anxiety alongside the relief, you are
not ungrateful. Your nervous system is recalibrating to a new set of demands.
That is normal. And it is worth paying attention to.
Part 2: The Specific Mental
Health Risks Around Result Day
This section matters because these risks are real,
documented, and specifically elevated in the period immediately following major
examination results in India.
The Suicide and Self-Harm Risk
Is Real and It Peaks Now
This is the uncomfortable truth that every responsible
adult in a student's life needs to hear clearly: suicide and self-harm
incidents among students in India show a documented peak in the days following
major board exam result announcements.
The data is not ambiguous. After Class 10 RBSE results,
Class 12 RBSE results, JEE and NEET results — there are spikes. Not everywhere,
not for every student, but across the population, the risk is elevated.
The students most at risk are:
- Those
who have received results significantly below their expectations or their
family's expectations
- Those
for whom academic performance has become the primary or sole source of
self-worth
- Those
who are already carrying undiagnosed depression or anxiety
- Those
who have experienced the result in isolation — without immediate access to
supportive, non-judgmental connection
- Those
who have received an initial family response that communicated shame,
blame, or catastrophe rather than support
If you are reading this and you are feeling hopeless — if
the result feels unsurvivable, if you cannot see a future, if you are having
thoughts of hurting yourself — please call iCall at 9152987821 right now.
Before anything else. Before talking to your parents. Before making any
decisions. Call that number.
The result can be managed. It can be retaken. It can be
worked around. It can be the beginning of a different, unexpected, and
genuinely good path. None of those possibilities are accessible from a place of
acute crisis.
Please call.
The Shame-Isolation Loop
The most dangerous psychological dynamic on result day is
not the result itself — it is the isolation that a bad result produces.
The student who is ashamed of their result stops talking.
They stop reaching out. They retreat to their room, to their phone, to their
own thoughts — which, running on cortisol and catastrophic future-projection,
are the worst possible companions in that moment.
Isolation amplifies every negative thought. It removes
the reality-checking that comes from human connection. It allows the
catastrophic narrative — "this result defines my entire future" — to
run unchallenged and grow.
The single most protective thing a student can do after a
difficult result is to not be alone with their thoughts.
Not to have a conversation about the result necessarily —
just to be with people. To allow human presence to regulate what isolation
amplifies.
The Comparison Spiral
Results day in the era of social media is an unrelenting
comparison event. Before the afternoon is over, WhatsApp groups are full of
everyone's results. Instagram stories are appearing. The student whose result
was adequate is watching others' celebrations and measuring themselves against
a curated highlight reel of their peer group's best performances.
This comparison spiral is neurologically harmful in a
documented, measurable way. It activates the same threat response as the result
itself — producing a secondary cortisol spike on top of the first. It narrows
the student's perception of their own options and worth. And it does so based
on systematically incomplete information — because the student who scored 60%
and is devastated is not posting about it, while the student who scored 95% is.
If you are on social media right now comparing your
result to others': please put the phone down. Not forever. Just for
today. The comparison is not information. It is harm dressed as data.
Part 3: What the Result
Actually Means — and What It Doesn't
What It Means
A board result — whether RBSE Class 5, Class 8, Class 10,
or Class 12 — is a measurement. It measures a specific set of knowledge and
skills, tested under specific conditions, on specific days. It is one data
point in a long, complex, multidimensional story.
A good result means: you knew the tested material well,
on those days, under those conditions.
A poor result means: there was a gap between what was
tested and what you were able to demonstrate, on those days, under those
conditions.
Both of these are useful information. Neither of them is
a verdict.
What It Does Not Mean
It does not measure your intelligence. Research on
academic performance and intelligence consistently shows that exam scores
measure a specific, narrow set of cognitive skills — primarily memory retrieval
and structured problem-solving — that are one component of intelligence, not
its totality.
It does not measure your potential. The history of human
achievement is full of people whose academic results predicted mediocrity and
whose lives produced something else entirely. Not because the exams were wrong
— but because academic performance and life outcomes are related but
non-identical variables.
It does not measure your worth as a person. This one
needs to be said directly, because the Indian academic culture has constructed
an environment in which marks feel like moral measurements. They are not. A
student who scored 45% on their RBSE Class 10 exam is not 45% of a person. They
are a full person who scored 45% on an exam.
It does not close the doors you are imagining it closes.
This is worth being specific about, because the catastrophic thinking in the
immediate aftermath of a difficult result is often about specific, imagined
closed doors — "I can't get into a good college," "I can't
become what I wanted to become," "I have ruined my future."
Most of these specific fears are not accurate. There are
multiple pathways to almost every destination. There are improvement exams.
There are alternative routes. There are paths that don't look like the path you
imagined and lead somewhere equally good or better.
The door that appears closed in the cortisol-flooded
hours after a difficult result is almost never as closed as it appears.
Part 4: The Parent Reading
This — What Your Child Needs From You Right Now
This section is for the parent who checked rajasthan
board result 2026 on shala darpan or rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in and is now
sitting with a result that isn't what they hoped for.
Your child is watching you.
Not just with their eyes. With their entire nervous
system. The way you respond to this result in the next few hours will shape,
more than anything else, what this moment means to them psychologically.
What not to say:
"How did this happen?" — places blame before
connection.
"What will people say?" — makes their shame
about your social standing.
"Your cousin scored 85%, what happened with
you?" — comparison in crisis is cruelty dressed as motivation.
"All that money spent on coaching and this is the
result?" — financial guilt on top of academic shame is a clinical risk
factor.
"You've ruined your future." — this is
categorically, factually not true, and saying it in this moment causes real,
lasting psychological harm.
What to say:
"I love you. This result doesn't change that."
"Let's not talk about next steps today. Today I just
want to know how you're feeling."
"I'm not disappointed in you. I'm disappointed for
you — and that's different."
"This is hard. I know it's hard. We'll figure out
what comes next together."
The parent who leads with connection rather than assessment
— who makes the child feel seen as a person before being evaluated as a student
— is the parent who keeps the conversation open. And keeping the conversation
open is, on result day, potentially life-saving.
Absolute red flags requiring immediate action:
If your child:
- Refuses
to come out of their room for several hours
- Says
anything suggesting they cannot see a future or do not want to continue
- Seems
unusually calm after intense distress (this can indicate a decision has
been made)
- Gives
away their phone or possessions
- Says
goodbye in an unusual way
Do not leave them alone. Do not send them to their room.
Do not manage this over a phone call if you are not physically present. Get to
them. Get professional help. Call the crisis line: iCall 9152987821 or Vandrevala
Foundation 1860-2662-345.
Part 5: The Path Forward —
Practical and Honest
For the student whose RBSE result was difficult — whether
Class 5, Class 8, Class 10, or Class 12 — here is the practical reality, stated
honestly:
Class 5 and Class 8 Results
These results, while important within the school system,
have the least long-term academic consequence of any board result. There are
clear pathways forward regardless of outcome. If your child struggled with
Class 5 or Class 8 board exams, this is primarily information about their
learning needs — not a predictor of their long-term academic trajectory.
This result is a beginning of understanding, not an
ending of possibility.
Class 10 Results
RBSE Class 10 results matter for immediate stream selection
and college admission pathways. A result lower than desired affects these
immediate choices.
It does not, however, determine:
- Whether
you can pursue your desired career
- Whether
you can enter higher education
- Whether
you can improve through compartmental examination or improvement exams
- Whether
your Class 12 result will be limited by this one
Many students who struggled in Class 10 have had
exceptional Class 12 results. The trajectory is not fixed. The direction is not
determined.
Options that exist regardless of today's result:
- Compartmental
examination for those who need to clear specific subjects
- Improvement
examination for those who wish to improve scores
- Stream
flexibility — the subject combination you take in Class 11 is a
choice with multiple options
- Private
preparation — targeted support for specific subject
difficulties
Class 12 Results
Class 12 RBSE results have the most immediate and
concrete consequences — they directly affect college admission processes. A
result lower than required for a specific course or institution is genuinely
constraining in the short term.
It is not, however, a permanent constraint. Options that
exist:
- Improvement
examination — most state boards including RBSE offer this
- Gap
year with targeted preparation — for competitive
entrance exams, one additional year of preparation with the right support
produces dramatically different outcomes
- Alternative
institutions — the specific college you imagined is not the only
college that leads to a good life
- Course
alternatives — the specific course you imagined is not the only
course that leads to your desired profession
- Skill-based
and vocational pathways — increasingly, and
correctly, recognised as legitimate and valuable routes to professional
success
What is most important in the immediate aftermath of a
difficult Class 12 result is not to make permanent decisions in a temporary
emotional state.
Do not decide, on result day, that your future is over.
Do not make major life decisions — dropping out, leaving home, abandoning a
career aspiration — in the hours and days immediately following a result. The
cortisol will clear. The perspective will return. The options that are
invisible today will become visible in two weeks.
Give yourself two weeks before making any decisions.
Part 6: The Bigger Picture —
What This Moment Is Teaching You
This is the part of the article that the immediate
cortisol response will resist most strongly. But it is worth trying to hear.
Difficulty — including academic difficulty, including
disappointing results — is not the opposite of a good life. It is frequently a
part of one.
The resilience that makes a person capable of sustaining
effort through adversity, of recovering from disappointment, of building
something meaningful from an unexpected direction — that resilience is not
built in the moments of easy success. It is built in the moments of difficult
failure.
The student who gets exactly the result they expected and
proceeds down exactly the planned path develops a specific kind of competence.
The student who gets an unexpected result, navigates the confusion,
recalibrates, and finds a path forward — that student develops something
different. Something that will serve them in the parts of life that no exam can
prepare them for.
This is not consolation philosophy. This is what
psychiatrists and psychologists observe across decades of working with adults
who look back on the difficult moments of their education and can, now, see
what those moments produced.
The result you got today is not the most important thing
that will happen to you. How you respond to it — with support, with honesty,
with time, and with the willingness to find the path that is actually available
to you — that is what matters.
Part 7: Getting Support —
Because You Don't Have to Navigate This Alone
If you or your child is struggling in the aftermath of
board results — whether with acute distress, persistent low mood, anxiety about
the future, or the deeper patterns of depression and anxiety that result stress
sometimes brings to the surface — professional support is available and
appropriate.
At Asha Wellness Sanctuary Hospital, Kota, Dr. Akash
Parihar (MD Psychiatry) and his team work specifically with students navigating
academic stress, examination anxiety, result-related depression, and the
broader mental health challenges of the Indian educational system.
A psychiatric consultation can:
- Assess
whether what you or your child is experiencing requires clinical
intervention
- Provide
evidence-based treatment for depression, anxiety, and acute stress
responses
- Offer
structured psychological support for academic transition periods
- Give
parents guidance on supporting a child through academic difficulty
- Identify
any underlying conditions — ADHD, learning difficulties, anxiety disorders
— that may have contributed to the result and that are highly treatable
with appropriate support
📞 7300342858
The call takes courage. The support changes things. You
don't have to navigate this alone.
Crisis Support — Please Save
These Numbers
iCall (TISS): 9152987821 — Free,
confidential, trained counsellors Vandrevala Foundation: 1860-2662-345 —
24/7, multilingual NIMHANS Helpline: 080-46110007 iCall Student
Support: Specifically for students in academic distress
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger: go to
the nearest hospital emergency department or call 112.
The Sentence This Article Ends
With
The result page you just looked at — on
rajeduboard.rajasthan.gov.in, on rajresults.nic.in, on shala darpan, on
indiaresults.com — shows a number.
That number is not you.
You are the person who sat down and tried. Who prepared,
imperfectly, with the resources and the state of mind you had. Who showed up on
the days the exam was held.
You are also the person reading this — which means you
are the person who is still here, still thinking, still capable of a next step.
The next step does not have to be perfect. It just has to
be forward.
We are here when you are ready to take it.
📞 Dr. Akash
Parihar | MD Psychiatry Asha Wellness Sanctuary Hospital, Kota 📞 7300342858
Crisis Lines: iCall: 9152987821 | Vandrevala Foundation:
1860-2662-345 | NIMHANS: 080-46110007
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