PUNE: To raise awareness about the mental health of students, St Mira’s College for Girls has started a Mental Well-being programme which has been initiated by its Department of Psychology.
According to the department’s reports, students face stress due to various events, including academics, career-related issues, social relationships, parental conflict, emotional abuse and addiction. Around 37.7 per cent of students suffer from moderate depression in Indian universities as per the Asian Journal of Psychiatry.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has stated that India has one of the highest student suicide rates in the world, and on an average, one student commits suicide every hour. Therefore, there is a need to have a preventive programme which integrates with the intervention model, said an official statement by the college.
Around 763 students who undertook the online survey conducted by students of the college said that stress, anxiety, anger, phone addiction and loneliness are among other common issues which they face regularly.
About 7.7 per cent of students said they get suicidal thoughts, whereas 7.5 per cent have thoughts indicating self-harm. 62.6 per cent of these students have signed up for mental health support.
Mental Well-being programme will provide a counsellor on call every day throughout the academic year on the campus. There will be two part-time counsellors two days every week for individual counselling services, student-centric as well as staff-centric programmes, an open-ended programme so emerging issues can be addressed as per immediate needs, contextual framework and ecological framework.
Principal Gulshan Gidwani said that the objective of the programme is to reach out to every student in the college. “After I had come across a case study of my students, I felt the need of having a counsellor on board last year. It was after we realised that hundreds of students had lined up for counselling sessions,” said Gidwani.
“Post this the college undertook a survey and received response from over 700 students. This itself was alarming for us. Not only students but also the previous generation or all people regardless of their age are today finding it difficult to cope up with their problems. This programme is initiated to help students come out of depression and enable access to counseling for better mental health,” she added.
