KOCHI: It is a normal afternoon like any other. In a little house on the outskirts of Kottayam district, a young mother is burning a few dry leaves in her backyard. Looking intently at the flames is her 13-year-old son. He slowly walks to a corner, lifts up a kerosene can, opens the lid and before the mother can notice, pours its contents all over him. Next moment the boy jumps into the fire. The incident took place about a few months back in Kottayam. The mother had scolded her child a few minutes before the incident, but could a child be so grief-stricken by the incident that should take such an extreme step? Statistics says yes. Increasing rates of depression, suicidal tendencies, drug abuse, anti-social activities are all a part of the mental health scenario among children today. The parents too are a worried lot. But the fear of being tagged with a ‘mental illness’ coupled with the social stigma has meant both parents and children are still very reluctant to seek professional help.It is in this scenario that screening programmes have found their use. Screening sessions basically analyse students on a wide range of issues including speech therapy, lifestyle skills, depression, learning disorders and so on. If a problem area is identified, the students are promptly offered help or referred to specialists.“In a number of cases all that the child might need is a one hour session with a councillor to talk about his/her problems. But if this one hour session is not given it might slowly snow-ball into larger issues in the long run. It is here that the screening sessions play a huge role,” says MKG Nair, Director , Child Development Centre.Though several projects have been initiated at the central and state level in this regard, effective and systematic screening of school children are yet to see the light of the day. A number of NGOs, medical organisations and private parties are in the meanwhile tapping the space. “When there is a tagging of ‘mental health’ screening, there is always a stigma. But when we conducted screening tests for students on learning problems, the response was tremendous.We had conducted what was called lifeskill day during which there were councilling sessions at the end of the day.After doing it in two schools, the demand was so much that we are now in the process of making manuals on ‘How to hold Lifeskills Day’. This can be given to schools and they can organsie it themselves,” says Dr. C J John, Psychiatrist and Founder Director of NGO, Maithri.Compass Team, an organisation that gives screening programmes and assesses student on various grounds including speech, language skills, nutrition, psychology and so on has been in the field for about a year now.“There is a huge demand. Within a year we have screened more than 3000 students from Kochi, Kozhikode and Kottayam. We are completely booked for the next year as well. In the screening session that we held, it was found that 40 per cent of the students between the age of 6-14 have some kind of behavioral problems - emotional, social or thought related.”“Once the problem is identified we refer them to doctors either our own or from various organisations. In some cases all that is needed is for the parents to spend quality time with the child,” says Founder and Chief Guidance Officer-The Compass Team, Manoj Krishnan.
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