Why do students in Kashmir need mass counseling!
By: Zainab-Ul-Nisa
The political and social scenario of Kashmir has never been stable, or at least the students of my age have never seen it so. Probably, this is the only region in the whole sub-continent where people have been grappling with issues including unnatural deaths, killings, arrests, drug menace, poverty, acute unemployment, and so on for quite a long time.
Since the violence has been here for several decades, it has taken a toll on the mental health of people of all age groups. This simply means that not only the elders have been facing the brutal impact of violence on their mental health, but the generations which were born and grew up during the past 30 years have also fallen prey to the impact of the prevailing situation.
In fact, the prolonged phase of violence has engulfed our three generations in a row. That means the parents or caregivers, who are looking after the present generation of kids, are disturbed mentally by the offshoot consequences of the conflict over the years.
Usually, children and young adults are more vulnerable in places where there is a conflict because while tackling the external conflicts, internal conflicts occur in their naive minds. There’ve been comprehensive surveys, studies, and investigations in the conflict zones of the world wherein experts have found the fact that conflicts draw the worst kind of impact on these naive human beings.
This has happened in our part of the world as well. According to the Srinagar-based Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (IMHANS), the number of children treated in the psychiatric ward of the Srinagar hospital almost doubled between 2016 and 2019, from around 17,000 to 30,000. These figures speak for themselves.
The experts have time and again explained that the young generation of Kashmir has been getting ruined due to the adverse situation in our valley. We have plenty of examples around us wherein we see the abnormal situation in Kashmir drawing its impact on young minds. Let me share a couple of case studies with you:
Two years back, when article 370 was revoked and Kashmir became a Union Territory, several people protested and many were arrested and detained under PSA. One can only imagine the trauma such incidents invoke for the concerned families. Similarly, a relative of ours was killed long ago by unknown gunmen. At that time, his son Imran (named changed) was three years old, certainly not able to understand the tragedy that he was forced to face at that time. Now, he’s a young boy of 18 years. His mother says, “He was probably 7 to 8 years of age when he started missing his father and began to ask me strange questions about what had happened when he was three”. Now, his mother says he has grown up as an unusual boy, who behaves strangely if compared to other boys of his age. Clearly, Imran has got his share of mental health problems caused by that particular incident of violence.
Recently, two different incidents took place in the valley. A cop and an artist were killed at different locations. The only commonality these two incidents share is that both murders were witnessed by their minor kids. The cop’s daughter is 9 years old while the actor’s nephew is 11. Both suffered injuries during the incident. These injuries surely would heal but what about the trauma that will haunt them for the rest of their lives? What about the nightmares these kids would possibly have by rewinding the incident in their minds and imagining their loved ones blood-soaked?
I wonder, how many mentally disturbed children do we’ve in our society? How many youngsters would be studying in our schools that might have faced a similar trauma? I don’t have any specific answer to it but I’m sure there must be many, as we live in a society where everybody can relate to such true stories by some means. Even experts have confirmed that the valley has thousands of such youngsters. In one of his interviews, Kashmir’s veteran mental health expert Dr. MushtaqMargoob says, “more than 58% of the adult population has experienced or witnessed traumatic life events. The disabling disorder PTSD is currently prevalent in more than 7% of the population, and so is depression in more than 19 % of people. The women and children are the worst affected…”
Now, the million-dollar question is: if there’re such students in our schools, does anybody bother about them? Shouldn’t there be some sort of mechanism to find such children and help them to get out of the vicious cycle of violence?
The National Education Policy (NEP) makes it mandatory that every school should’ve at least one ‘professional’ counsellor. However, the schools in the rest of the country may or may not require such clinical counsellors yet the schools in the valley do. The reason why I’ve highlighted the word professional is because of personal observation. Recently in our school, I got to know that there are no professional counsellors and one of the teachers said, “We don’t have professionals but we do have teachers who play the roles of counsellors too”. Yes, I understand that the intention behind it was pure. But this is how we take mental health issues for granted; we think anybody can treat it. Counselling doesn’t consist of conversations only. We’ve to understand that just like only an orthopedic doctor can treat a fracture in the same way only a therapist can provide treatment. It doesn’t matter if it’s a teacher or a friend, their role is to be supportive and encourage the victim to reach out to family and medical professionals.
Despite their good intentions, they may not fully understand the severity of the problem. Or even sometimes the victims might be reluctant to accept the possibility that they could have a disorder. So, schools need professionals. If our schools can have educational counselors then why not a clinical psychologist? After all, schools act as the comfort zones for children where their personality is supposed to be developed holistically (physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, and academically). Students’ sense of connectivity and well-being must be improved. Otherwise, our children will lack self-esteem and become hyper-sensitive, which leads to incompetence. Moreover, nothing can change if we intend to raise voices for such social stigmas once a year (world mental health day), we can try to normalize mental health issues and foster talks about the stigma related to them through regular education in order to eliminate the fear once and for all.
If the media reports are to be believed we have a scarcity of such professionals in the valley. As per the reports, Kashmir doesn’t have a sufficient number of professionals to cater to all schools. So, what to do? Should we deny the requirement? They say children are the future of a nation. So, can we afford to compromise our future by ignoring such a vast population of vulnerable children? No, not at all. Obviously, there’s a solution for every problem, the matter of concern is: are we actually even trying to find a solution. In the given circumstances, the solution is to outsource the job. Professionals can be hired from outside the valley, even if they aren’t ready to come physically in this unfortunate part of the world, hire them virtually. These professionals can deliver speeches, health talks, debates, question-answer sessions, and so on. Here comes the role of the government and NGOs. The department of school education must shoulder the responsibility. They’ve enough finances at their disposal and even if they don’t, the infrastructure and many other things can be compromised to compensate for a mass counselling campaign. The advantages of this powerful move are incalculable.
Mass counselling campaigns can work in Kashmir more smoothly than individual sessions due to many reasons. Talking about mental illnesses is considered a taboo in our society and children might be afraid to speak about it or even sometimes the victims themselves don’t know that they’re struggling with a disorder. So, in such cases, campaigns will work in both direct and indirect ways and change the perspective of the population. It would become a compulsion for the students to attend the campaigns even if they don’t want to. Hence, their personality would be developed subconsciously, which would definitely help them in life. Therefore, make counselling mandatory in schools just like the morning assembly and many other rules, which students would be compelled to attend. I’ve noticed, in schools, morning assemblies are extended for such a long period of time, that students aren’t mentally even present there due to exhaustion. Yes, the idea behind these assemblies is to encourage students to come forward and build confidence in public speaking but there’s no benefit of such gatherings when the root cause remains unresolved, i.e; low self-esteem. Let’s just come together and cut the roots of such problems and save our generations.
(The writer is a student of class 12th at GGHS Kothibagh Srinagar and can be reached at [email protected])
