Mental health: Tamil Nadu launches initiative to assist medicos

CHENNAI: Health Minister Ma Subramanian on Monday launched 'Mananala Nallaatharavu Mandram' (MaNaM), a mental health programme, to prevent suicides and tackle mental health issues among students in all the government medical, dental, and paramedical colleges in the State.

The initiative was launched in an event held as part of the World Suicide Prevention Day at the Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai. It aims to create public awareness on mental health, its bio-psycho-social determinants, problems and available services to tackle them.

Speaking to TNIE, Dr P Poorna Chandrika, Director of Institute of Mental Health at Kilpauk in Chennai, said under the programme, peer counsellors would be roped in to identify students with mental distress and provide them with support. The counsellors would be trained in life skills, coping skills, and stress management techniques so that they can disseminate them to their peers, said a press release.

While a monitoring committee and empowerment committee will work in tandem with the peer counsellors (MaNaM ambassadors) who will identify the needy students, a helpline number will also be launched to provide the students immediate psychological support.

The empowerment committee will act as a democratic and inclusive platform to share the students' experiences and concerns on an informal basis during the periodical coming together of the committee, and the monitoring committee will monitor, review, and facilitate the other panel's activities and receive feedback from MaNaM ambassadors regarding the teaching, learning process, and extra curricular activities at the institute, added the release. The psychiatry department of the respective medical college will work as a nodal department for the volunteers of MaNaM.