By Gisel Erumachadathu
Guwahati: A university in northeastern India organized a national seminar on mental health and social work practices in Guwahati. Some 130 people attended the April 27-28 program with 17 presentations.
Assam Don Bosco University department of Social Work, in collaboration with Psychiatric Social Work Services, Department of Psychiatry, Guwahati Medical College and Hospital and the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, LGB Regional Institute of Mental Health (LGBRIMH), Tezpur, organized at ADBU Tapesia Campus.
The LGBRIMH is one of the oldest mental health care institutes in India established in 1876. It is located in Tezpur in Sonitpur district of Assam. Over the years, this tertiary mental health care institute has played a major role in catering to the entire population of northeastern India.
“The specific aim of the seminar was to explore and understand the different aspects of mental health as a cross cutting issue in social work practice and political life of the region,” said Bornali Das, one of the organizers.
The seminar aimed “to explore the recent development in mental health and social work practice relating to women’s mental health,” Das explained.
Riju Sharma, director of the School of Social sciences and Head of the Department of Social Work Department, noted an increase in mental health illness in the modern world. She blamed it on “ever increasing stress in our lives” because of multifarious demands on personal and professional domains. Added to them are social and economic factors that influence one’s life, she added.
Sharma lamented that the mental health of women is given less importance, “even though women were more prone to mental illness owing to their social and economic status in a male-dominated society.”
Chief guest was Padmashri Mukul Chandra Goswami, a social worker and founder of Ashadeep (lamp of hope), an NGO that manages homes for people with mentally illness and works for the rehabilitation of the elderly and mental patients.
“Almost all the states in our country still grapple with mental health and the stigma, discrimination that has been associated with it for centuries without denying the fact that the social work profession has evolved much in the North Eastern Region during the recent fast,” Goswami told the opening function.
Father Stephen Mavely, Vice Chancellor of the Salesian university, stressed that “a rich real-world experience must back the theoretical understanding if one has to become a true catalyst in the society today.” He was commenting on the responsibility of the social work professionals and trainers in fusing the essence of academics with actual field experiences.
Prof. Kalpana Sarathy, deputy director of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati, in her keynote address stressed the need for the integration of mental health and social work while providing the participants with an elaborative understanding of the evolution of social work in the region.