PGI to bring WHO project to city

SOURAV SANYAL
NEW DELHI: In keeping with the acute shortage of trained mental health professionals in the country, the WHO is supporting a project floated by the New Delhi-based Vidyasagar Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (VIMHANS) which aims at imparting ''life skills'' to adolescents enabling them to double up as counsellors in the respective schools.
Talks have been held between VIMHANS and PGI, Chandigarh, at the ''International Congress of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry'' being held here regarding implementing the multi-centric programme in Chandigarh.
PGI is ''enthused'' at the proposal of implementing this WHO-supported project. Brainchild of Jitendra Nagpal, co-coordinator, Child Development and Adolescent Health Centre, VIMHANS, ''Life Skills programme'' arose out of the "dire need of trained mental health professionals" in the country.
Having started the pilot project four years ago, the programme is now spread over 110 schools in New Delhi and adjoining areas of Faridabad, Noida and Gurgaon, including 44 government schools. Seeing the positive outcome of the programme, it has now been extended to Sikkim and Jodhpur.
"In India children constitute nearly 40 per cent of the 1,000 million population. Of this, at least 10-12 per cent of those below 18 years of age suffer from abnormalities in behaviour and development. Child mental health care has received scant attention in service, research and training aspects in the national context, despite sound policy guidelines," notes Nagpal.
"These youngsters seem to be in a vague kind of mourning of having lost something, of a sense of betrayal, a gnawing frustration that often blazes into violence, aggression, insecurity, loneliness, boredom, defiance and a feeling of being on the brink of crisis-symptoms. The school plays a crucial role in the development of cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional and moral functions in a child and that is what led to the inception of the holistic mental health programmes," he adds.
Dubbed ''Expressions'', the programme aims at sensitisation of school children and adolescents about relevant psychosocial issues, promotion of life skills like anger management, time management, coping with negative emotions, as abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour enabling children to deal effectively with challenges of every day life.
"The prime area of focus is to initiate and maintain a dialogue between students, teachers and parents about their mutual concern on psychosocialadaptation in a changing environment, for prevention of disability associated with mental and behavioural problems. The aim is to implement the programme nationwide."