Price of Empathy: When Internships Become Economic Barriers

Interns are often exposed to difficult cases and trauma narratives, expected to manage their own stress without supervision or support. Burnout, anxiety, and fatigue are common. Their emotional labor is silently extracted and normalized—while the institutions benefit, and the students are left mentally and financially drained.

- SAISHA AGARWAL AND DHWANI BHATIA

At a time when mental health awareness is gaining long-overdue attention in India, it is a striking and troubling irony that students training to become mental health professionals are being systematically exploited in the name of "education."

Internships—which are supposed to help psychology students' transition from academic knowledge to clinical competence—have instead become a financial burden.

What's worse, many institutions and clinics do not just expect unpaid labor; they actually charge students for the opportunity to work.

These aren't nominal fees, either.

For a few weeks of internship, students are often required to pay between Rs 5,000 and Rs 25,000 or more.

In exchange, they may be allowed to observe therapy, handle documentation, or assist licensed psychologists.

This is not passive learning.

It is emotionally taxing work: attending therapy sessions, conducting intake interviews, listening to trauma, and absorbing distress—without any form of supervision, financial assistance, or institutional care.

The justification? "Exposure" and "experience."

But these words ring hollow when the experience is only accessible to those who can afford it.

For students from low- and middle-income backgrounds, these costs become prohibitive when combined with transport, food, rent, and rising tuition.

It creates a disturbing system of economic gatekeeping, where access to quality learning, mentorship, and job opportunities is no longer about talent or potential—it's about who can pay.

In this structure, it is wealth, not empathy or capability, which determines one's future in mental health care.