Need to develop counselling programme at the grassroots level, applicable to the underdeveloped areas of the country (Part 1.3):

     Education is considered to be a boon, it should help channelize the youthful energies towards creativity and self-actualisation. It should help children understand their abilities and personality dispositions so that they can perform at their best in the school (IGNOU, N.D). Counselling is one of the practices which supports children in these aspects. Counselling does not mean just an appointment of the counsellor in a school, counselling is a system and a complete process.

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To benefit from the counselling practices, a school should have a well planned and managed counselling system.

What is Counselling? Counselling is the means by which one person helps another through purposeful conversation, it is not an advise giving and advice seeking, but to help a person to take decision himself. (b-u.ac.in, N.D). Counselling is very helpful and necessary for children’s mental health support. Mental health is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his community. We generally see health as merely an absence of ailment or disease. But health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being (WHO, 2014).

Further, we can think of the critical question, is counselling always associated with overcoming deficiency or it could be for empowerment also? It is for developmental paradigm to explain whether a child is viewed as an asset/resource so that it has to be developed and supported. Or the child has to be developed on the basis of morality (moral development factor).

The first child guidance clinic was started in Mumbai at Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) as early as in 1937, the spread of such centres across the country has been sparse and patchy. There is an urgent need for a survey of the mental health or counselling services for children available in the country, as regards to the availability of trained staff, as well as the nature of facilities provided (Kapur, 2007).

Compared to rural geographies, the facilities are quite developed in urban spaces. Some urban schools adopt innovative approaches to sensitize school teachers in identification, referral and management of mental health problems in school settings. And some schools have even appointed full-time counsellors for this purpose. However, the majority of school children live in rural areas where service delivery is mostly absent except for ICDS Anganwadi services. There is a need to develop programmes at the grassroots level, which are applicable to the underdeveloped areas of the country (Kapur, 2007).

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This is part of Children's mental health and wellbeing series brought to you by Credence Learning Foundation. This article is taken from a study submitted as course work at Azim Premji University.

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