Key challenges and opportunities presented by school mental health counselling programs in India

Mental health counselling is a relatively new concept in Indian schools. With growing and ever-changing environment children and adolescents are exposed to, it becomes a vital tool to help them in understanding and adapting in a healthy way.

School-going children regularly face difficulties in adjusting to the changing environment at home and school such as, developing friendship bonds, academic pressure, securing a good position in class, balancing academics with extracurricular activities, sibling relationships and understanding self and so on, any of these areas can become a cause of distress, if unable to be managed appropriately.

Thus, become the role of Guidance counsellors central in mitigating effective strategies and coping mechanisms to students.

There are some opportunities presented by Mental Health Counselling in Indian schools, these are:

• Personal Space: Counsellors provide an open, comfortable and a private space, to students to talk about their concerns.

• Non-Judgmental Approach: Counsellors approach to help children overcome their problems with an empathetic and positive self-regard approach, thus making the children open up about their concerns.

• Identifying behavioral/developmental/learning problems: School counsellors also help in assessment and identification of children who are suffering from Specific learning disabilities, Autism, ADHD etc.

• Psychoeducation: Along with helping in enhancing the student’s wellbeing, counsellors are also well equipped to make the students, staff, parents and administration aware of various mental health disorders and modern-day issues faced by children and adolescents.

• Bridging the gap between teachers and students: Due to constraint of personal attention and time between teachers and students, children are often apprehensive and lack motivation to talk to teachers about their concerns if any, counsellors thereby act as a mediator between teachers and their students.

• Interdisciplinary team: School Counsellors and Special Educators along with School staff and administration, promotes an interdisciplinary team approach to address student needs and educational goals.

While there are various opportunities provided by Mental Health Counselling in Indian schools, there are few challenges faced by them too, these are:

• Lack of trained professionals: While there is need for counsellors in schools today, the sad reality remains that India faces a lack of professionally trained counsellors specializing in school counselling.

• Limited counsellors in schools: Majorly schools in India have about more than 3000 students’ studying in them. While they are divided into Primary, Middle and High school, there remains only 1 and max 2 counsellors per division. Thus, limiting the opportunity of counsellors to meet every student and conduct any follow up session.

• Lack of support from authorities: Since the awareness regarding counselling is limited in the school setup, Counsellors sometimes find the lack appropriate support and encouragement from their school’s administrative staff on the specificities of their role.

• Limited time for conducting sessions: Schools follow a fixed time table and have fixed subject classes that are followed by students and staff. Amidst this, the counsellors struggle to fix scheduled appointments for the students or conduct any follow up for the same.

• Playing dual role: School counsellors have to fulfil roles of being a teacher and a counsellor in the school, thus are faced with various challenges that comes with it.

SafeRealm understands the various challenges faced by school students in India. Thus, we offer confidential, non- judgmental and easy accessible options to connect with Counselors, who can understand the varied concerns faced by our country's school students.

If you would like to discuss your concerns with us, or wish to know more about Mental Health,

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