THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Presuming the devastating floods might have taken a toll on the mental health of the children, the state government is planning a slew of interventions. It is learnt the collaborative projects, including a tie-up with Unicef and National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru, are on the anvil.
For the mental health rehabilitation of the affected, including children, at flood-hit areas, the Health, Home, Cultural Affairs and other Departments are giving a final shape to some novel initiatives, said sources.
“The Health Department along with NIMHANS is giving final shape to a project proposal for the mental rehabilitation of the flood-affected people,” said Health Secretary Rajeev Sadanandan. The project will soon move to its implementation phase, he said.
At the same time, P Vijayan, IG (administration) at police headquarters said under Project Hope an initiative is being planned in which the overall mental rehabilitation of children in flood-hit areas will be taken care of. He further said the initiative will have the support of Unicef.
“To chalk out the initiatives that could be implemented under the initiative a workshop was conducted on Thursday. We will soon give final shape to it and will move towards the implementation phase,” he said.
The Health Department is weighing options like arranging a visit to the relief camps, participation in rehabilitation and restoration programmes and others for the mental health rehabilitation of children of flood-hit areas.
It is said, considering the view children are prone to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) post-floods, the department is planning a multi-tiered approach to identify them and to provide them with adequate intervention.
“An indirect approach is what we are planning. First, we will have to identify those schools where the project will have to be implemented. Here, the priority will be for those schools which got severely affected,” said a Health Department officer.
It is learnt that students from flood-hit areas will be persuaded to participate in drawing, painting and story writing workshops and their work will then be assessed for analysing their mental condition.
“Symptoms like reluctance to go to school, inattentiveness in studies and others are normal. But most importantly, a child’s psychological and mental well-being entirely depends on the adults. Thus, if an adult is able to recover from the shock of the floods, a child will follow suit,” said the officer.
The other proposal that the department put forward is using budding artists registered with the ‘Diamond Jubilee Fellowship for Aspiring Artists’ of the Cultural Affairs Department to conduct art and cultural programmes at school campuses of flood-hit areas.
A fruitless endeavour?
At the same time, a section of the officers of the Health Department alleges the involvement of NIMHANS is not going to help its intervention programmes in mental health care as the latter is focusing more on research and thesis-oriented data collection. According to an officer, NIMHANS is yet to make an effective intervention among the flood victims and offer them psycho-social support. They point out NIMHANS’ data collection drive is nothing but time-consuming and fruitless.