Mikhail Furtado was extremely worried about his 12th-grade exams. 

A few days before he was due to get his results, his father walked in and found him dead. 

"I opened the cottage door, put the light on and I found him hanging. He was hanging," Anthony Furtado says. 

When the results came out, his father learned that Mikhail had sailed through with good grades. 

He says he still can't bring himself to go and collect the results. 

But Furtado is trying to use his devastating experience to benefit others. He provides counseling and is a regular at suicide prevention workshops. 

"Sometimes, at the end, I do break down," he says. 

Highest rate in the world among young 

The scale of the problem among India's young people is huge. 

According to a recent World Health Organization report, India has the highest suicide rate in the world for the 15-to-29 age group. It stands at 35.5 per 100,000 people for 2012, the last year for which numbers are available. 

Across all age groups, nearly 260,000 people in India killed themselves that year. 

Bobby Zachariah, who runs a suicide prevention group, says he blames a breakdown in India's traditional family structure. 

"There were big families, there was a lot of support available," he says. 

"Nowadays, there is one child in the family," Zachariah says. "And the kind of parenting styles that were applied to them when they were kids doesn't apply to their children any more." 

Reducing stigma 

Some experts say a key problem is that families brush mental health issues under the carpet rather than facing them head on. 
How does Bobby Zachariah now work to prevent suicide?
Bobby Zachariah, who runs a suicide prevention group, says he blames a breakdown in India's traditional family structure. 
