Through counselling, IITs plan to tackle rising issue of poor mental health

IIT Madras

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras announced a wellness session series for its students, under which the institute is undertaking several initiatives to provide every student an environment filled with “harmony and peace”.

This programme is being conducted with the support of the National Health Mission, Department of Health and Family Welfare, Government of Tamil Nadu. In this wellness programme, experts will talk about various options available to students to address and mitigate stress whenever it is experienced.

Additionally, mental health tele counselling services (14416) will be offered to IIT students through TeleManas (14416), which is a 24X7 toll-free helpline providing quick mental health counselling services to students in times of distress.

IIT Delhi

In a major move, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D) has revamped its evaluation system and dropped a set of mid-semester exams to reduce students’ stress, the institute director Rangan Banerjee recently announced.

“Earlier we used to have two sets of exams during a semester, final exams at the end of each semester and several continuous evaluation mechanisms. We conducted an internal survey and based on feedback from all students and faculty, we have decided to drop one set of exams. So, now there will be two sets of exams besides routine evaluations,” Banerjee told PTI in an interview.

This decision was taken as the experts felt that the exam calendar was too packed, which caused more burden and stress for students. The decision has also been approved by the Senate and will be implemented from the ongoing semester.

IIT Hyderabad

IIT Hyderabad is running a ‘Sunshine’ initiative which is a buddy programme. In this programme, the institute invites volunteers from the student body to be a ‘buddy’ to support their batch/peers in their department.

Under this scheme, the institute also provides a mentor programme in which students from all departments are encouraged to apply for mentorship. The aim is to have student mentors from all departments to make it easier for the students to find a person to adapt to their department.

IIT Guwahati

The institute runs a Center for Holistic Wellbeing to promote the overall well-being of the students on campus and help mitigate the gap between the stigma attached to counselling and actually accessing mental health care. As per a report by PTI, the details of students with low CPIs (Cumulative Performance Index) and backloggers are shared by the academic section with the Deans and the Chairperson of Welfare Board. With the help of this list, counsellors get in contact with the listed students to understand their state of mind and the reason for low performance.

IITG offers mandatory counseling to all the newly admitted students. This provides mental support to the students, and familiarises the students about the resources available to them. The institute also organised a special session on the mental wellbeing of all the students during the orientation session on August 1.

Some other key initiatives taken by the institute (among others) are:

• ‘Know Your Neighbours’ campaign among the students provides adequate social support and a sense of community.
• In order to offer easy access to all mental health facilities in the campus , QR Codes were pasted on doors of hostel rooms. This facilitates the students to reach to the point of contacts. 
• The queries and counsellors’ responses are published in an e-magazine (Declutter Magazine) without revealing students’ identity. This encourages the student community to reach out the counselling cell whenever need arises. 
• Peer Mentorship Program: every student has been assigned a student volunteer as peer mentor.

IIT Bombay

The institute faced a lot of brunt for the case of Darshan Solanki, after which the institute re-instated that IITB Student Wellness Centre (SWC) provides counselling to all students of the institute on mental health issues, regardless of caste, gender or other aspects. “The SWC is taking steps to help all students, proactively, and whenever counselling is needed, SWC counsellors are providing it,” a statement from the institute read.

IIT Bombay has taken some more steps to help students in such cases such as one-of-its-kind SC/ST students cell, a sensitisation course on caste related (especially SC/ST) issues and The Bandhu – a self-help website in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) to provide information about mental health problems to students.

The institute is also holding interaction sessions of IIT Bombay student counsellors with an external agency that is working in mental health aspects of marginalised individuals and communities, taking into account systemic oppressions based on caste, class, ability, age, region, gender, sexuality, religion.

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