Dateline Mussoorie: Woodstock School Mussoorie hosted India’s first International School Mental Health Conference on the 15th of April. The theme for the conference was ‘Wellbeing in Schools-Making it a Priority.’ 12 schools from within India and two schools from overseas, one each from Australia and South America participated in this hybrid conference.
Keynote speakers, Dr Dheeraj Kattula, Addiction Management Specialist, and Dr Raja Paulraj, spoke about various mental health challenges among the youth including addictions, peer pressure, self-harm behaviours, stress and anxiety etc and discussed strategies to deal with these issues. The speakers through their talks, emphasized that mental health is an integral part of health and everybody has to take responsibility for their own mental health and wellbeing.
Mrs Binu Thomas, Head of the Department of Personal Counselling at Woodstock School Mussoorie and the lead of the organizing committee said, “Because students spend so much of their time at school, it just made sense to have mental health awareness and education begin here. When we educate and empower our students to initiate dialogue on this topic, they are able to seek help when they need it.”
Regarding the idea of the conference, Thomas stated, ”Post COVID, we saw students return with a different set of struggles and the phenomenon seemed to be global. Hence the desire for institutional collaboration in building strategies to deal with student mental health, initiating conversations around areas of student struggles and emphasizing the importance of positive coping skills to deal with day to day struggles led to the idea of a conference.”
At the success of the conference, Ms Drishti Bhasin, conference coordinator signed off saying, “The widespread and enthusiastic participation tells us about the importance of mental health at school level and the need to continue these conversations within our schools and beyond.”
