Tamil Nadu Develops Program To Support Doctors

To stop suicides and address mental health concerns among students in all of the State's government medical, dentistry, and paramedical colleges, Health Minister Ma Subramanian on Monday unveiled "Mananala Nallaatharavu Mandram," a mental health programme. The project was introduced at an event hosted at Chennai's Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital as part of World Suicide Prevention Day.

It strives to raise knowledge among the general population about mental health, its bio-psycho-social determinants, issues, and resources that can be used to address them.

According to Dr. P Poorna Chandrika, Director of the Institute of Mental Health at Kilpauk in Chennai, Peer counsellors will be used as part of the programme to spot kids who are experiencing mental distress and offer them help. In order for the counsellors to share these talents with their peers, they would receive training in life skills, coping mechanisms, and stress management methods.

In addition to the peer counsellors who will identify the needed kids, a monitoring committee and empowerment committee will also be established, and a helpline number will be made available to the students so they may receive rapid psychological care.

The empowerment committee will serve as a democratic and welcoming forum for students to share their experiences and concerns informally during the committee's regular meetings, while the monitoring committee will keep an eye on, review, and facilitate the activities of the other panels and gather input from MaNaM ambassadors regarding the institute's instruction, learning process, and extracurricular activities.

Furthermore, the individual medical college's department of psychiatry will serve as a nodal department for the MaNaM volunteers.