BENGALURU: Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests. Economic slowdown. Climate change. And now coronavirus. 2020 is proving to be a tough year, say city mental health practitioners. And now with social distancing in the picture, the number of people seeking online consultation with experts has only gone up.
According to Dr Jini K Gopinath, who is the chief psychology officer at YourDOST, “There has been a 50 per cent increase in those buying our online packages, which offer 3-5 sessions. Of that percentage, about 60-80 per cent are new clients.” With most companies rolling out work-from-home (WFH) options, social contact is on the decline. Even those clients who were recovering are showing symptoms of depression and anxiety again, adds Gopinath. “Right now, it’s been about a week or two of this situation. If it gets extended, there is potential for depression and anxiety levels to rise,” he explains.
Mahesh Natarajan, a counsellor with InnerSight, reports a similar trend, where companies who have never considered corporate counselling before are now showing an interest. “In the past five days, we’ve received five queries from companies where the workforce is more than 6,000,” he says. Besides this, they have also received about 20 per cent extra calls from those who are finding it difficult to work from home, have health concerns or are upset with the government’s initiatives.
In order to deal with the current scenario, The Alternative Story, a city-based mental health service, hosted their first ever webinar on Friday. The 45-minute session, which was attended by 20 people, focused on coping strategies in times of quarantine. “This isn’t the most ideal way to bring people together but it is something,” says Rashi Vidyasagar, director of the company, while speaking of the webinar that was held on a pas-what-you-want model, with a minimum amount of `10. “We want people to know that it is okay to not be 100 per cent okay right now. And they aren’t alone. The situation isn’t on an individual level, but a result of abnormal circumstances,” explains Sharma, adding that based on response, the team would consider more such webinars in the coming days.
Natarajan too has reached out to his corporate clients to pitch webinars for their employees, especially those who are in vulnerable situations at home. “These include those facing domestic violence, pressure to marry or cope with expectations of in-laws or even those who are bearing the brunt of child-rearing responsibilities at the moment,” he points out. While companies are showing an interest, it might be too soon to roll them out. “Currently they are focused on ensuring business continuity. It will take them a week or 10 days to stabilise operations. So I’m expecting them to encourage these webinars by end March or early April,” says the counsellor.
Agrees Gopinath, who says thus far, he has noticed B2B clients showing an interest in this. “We’ve held three webinars on handing your mental health during WFH days for our corporate and educational clients. These were small organisations so 80-90 people were a part of it,” he says, adding that they are waiting for some more data before doing the same for B2C clients. “We wanted to know how many companies are trying WFH, an updated idea about number of cases, government measures, etc but we hope to do these next week.”