Psychology of the learner

Concept and importance of mental health Child guidance with special reference to the Indian context. Teacher and mental health approaches in education. How to persevere and promote the health of pupils? How to give guidance to parents when necessary? Promotion of mental health in school setting. The expert committee on mental health of the WHO conceived of mental health as the capacity of an individual to form harmonious relations with others and to participate in or contribute constructively to changes in the social and physical environment. It is opined by the Gillis that no one can hope to achieve on his own all happiness as so much lies in others hands and circumstances. But, perhaps he who comes nearest to attaining the ultimate will be the one who enjoys the life most. One of the important channels for health promotion is the formal educational process of the school. School serving all age groups remain attractive vehicles for programmatic activities designed to promote health and prevent diseases in the Indian context. Social behavioural and learning problems of pupils manifest them in schools. Addition of mental health inputs in the school health is likely to play a major role in their amelioration. Teachers are to be adequately orientated in common mental health problems. Adolescence referred to child guidance clinics showed double number of boys than girls. They had different problems like severe psychiatric disturbances, hysterical neurosis. Conduct disorders, enuresis, stammering and stuttering, psychogenic headache, adjustment problems and scholastic backwardness. When the symptoms were arranged in decreasing order school related problems in 6 to 16 years were noted. 20 % adolescence had disturbances of different types. Considering the magnitude of mental health problems among school going children & the paucity of mental health manpower in India, it is important to give serious consideration to the following programmes:1. General orientation to school teachers regarding mental health problems to teenagers. This could be offered to the entire teaching faculty. Here the focus is on giving basic understanding of the manifestation of and emotional problems, epilepsy, mental retardation, speech problems and causes and treatment facilities available for management of these problems in the community. The mental health professionals require about 6 to 8 sessions- each session for about an hour to discuss these topics with the teachers. The orientation programme would help the teachers to identify the common mental health problems among children and to refer them to suitable service centers. The manual prepared by the WHO in 1982 could serve as background material for this purpose. 2. Training in counselling skills for teachers. The teachers who had undergone orientation programme in mental health could be given intensive training in skills of interviewing, establishing working relationships with children and counselling techniques like clarification, environmental manipulation and guidance to parents besides listening and ventilation. It requires 35 to 40 one hour sessions with adequate provisions for practical work of problem children and necessary demonstration. At the end of the course, the teacher would be equipped with necessary skills of counselling for the emotionally disturbed children and adolescence in schools. By this method, the self-esteemed of the teacher would improve considerably and his approach to the children is likely to become more humanistic and scientific. 3. Mental health education to students- Students could be orientated towards mental health

problems in 6 sessions and be enabled to understand causes and manifestations of psychosis, minor psychiatric disturbances , epilepsy and mental retardation. The students are enabled to understand themselves and also to help others who are in need of mental health services in their neighbourhood. Students negative attitude could be changed into positive behaviour of extending support to the needy. 4. Problems related promotional activities- after identifying the common problems in a particular school specific package programmes could be formulated to cater to specific areas like needs of personality development, inter-personal competence, and improvement of memory, socialization, scholastic performance, sex education and family life education. Such programmes are individual and the problems centered programmes could be orientated in the groups and inter-personal relationships could be improved. This will go a long way in making the programmes very helpful and effective in enriching the potentials of the school children. 5. Mental health professionals interaction through PTA- Seminars and workshops could be organized for the parents and teachers on topics like adolescent problems, generation gap, study habits, students scholastic performance, learning environment in families, child rearing practices, drug dependence, self-esteemed, value education, positive reinforcement. Such programmes would enable parents and teachers to understand the dynamics of human behaviour and intricacies of relationships. Parents strengthening contributions and teachers intense commitment would be towards overall development of school children. Conclusion- professionally trained social workers play a vital role in organizing the programme in schools. This would be very helpful in promoting mental health and preventing emotional disturbances of students in the early stages. Collaboration of school authorities with the professionally trained social workers would result in promoting mental health of Indian Adolescence and school going children. References- 1. Encyclopaedic handbook of medical psychology. 2. Behavioural medicine psychiatric 3. Government of India- National mental Health Programme 4. ICMR- Final report of task force on project of multicentre study of patents of Child and Adolescent psychiatric disorders. 5. Thesis of P.N. Rao 6. Epidemiological study of Bangalore University for M.D thesis. 7. WHO manual on child mental health problems. 8. The role of social workers published in Hindu.