Part I

Q.1-What is your overall understanding of mental health conditions of school and college
students in India?

Ans. Schools and colleges are the places from where we observe a rapid growth and
development be it in physical or social terms. In India students remain constrained by socio-
cultural pressures, norms of society while their adolescence period is still going, and most of us
are shown the face of academics as a must follow responsibility. Many students in India
involved in primary or secondary education see or face academics as a big-big problem which
they need help in. The period of adolescence is seen as a time-frame of storm and stress.

In a study conducted by Pulkit K and Prof. Kamlesh Singh, questions were asked to students
and teachers to see the factors affecting the well-being and to get a holistic picture to know
about the problems faced in the adolescence phase.

In the Student Report,

- Under the section Pertaining to Life at School the questions covered following:
1) The best thing about life at school, 2) One problem in school for which I need help.
- Under the section Factors Affecting Well-being the questions covered following:
1) Situation when I feel happy and well, 2) Factors in my environment that disturb my
well-being.
- Under section Changes that Adolescents Suggest to Improve their Well-being the
question covered following:
1) What changes should be introduced to improve the well-being and happiness in
school, outside, at Government level?

In the Teachers Interviews,

- Under the section Main Factors that Disturb the Well-being of Adolescents the question
covered following:
1) What are the main areas of concern that disturb well-being?
- Under Target Areas for Classroom based Positive Psychology Interventions for
Adolescents the following was asked:
1) What should be the key target areas of a positive psychology programme at
classroom level that aims to increase the well-being of students?

The survey and summary indicated that academics and peers factor were very important.
Students addressed peers very crucially in their lives because interactions with them helped in
their well-being. While many of them said that it hindered their well-being as well. Other things
were that teachers pointed out that students laid too much emphasis on material aspects.
Students, mentioned lack of facilities and the facilities should be improved in order to approach
the aspect of well-being.
Most of the teachers focused on a mutual effort from psychologists side and teachers side on
the use of classroom based interventions. It’s actually true that individual efforts aren’t that
effective and many past researches also lay emphasis on mutual collaboration. The conclusion
of this survey is that good peer relationship, family and parental guidance and the right
environment at home plays an important role in school life.

References:
(1) Sibnath Deb., Banu Parveen R, (2016). Depression among Indian university students
and its association with perceived university academic environment, living arrangements
and personal issues; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2016.07.010
(2) Pulkit K., Kamlesh S., (2016) Perceived Factors Affecting Well-Being among Urban
Indian Adolescents; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajp.2016.07.010

Q.2-What are the factors in the surrounding environment that influence the mental health
of these students?

Ans. For this question, I took interviews of my friends who were in a phase of depression at
sometime in their lives. I am a 4th year undergraduate and I took 3 interviews of all of them
having their own specific scenario. To be specific, I took Semi-Structured Interviews (considered
the best option incase of interviews). I asked a few questions and kept the rest
unplanned/spontaneous.

In all the 3 cases I kept same questions:

1) What were the factors that led to increase in mental illness/depression in your case?
(Risk factors)
2) What were the factors that led to decrement in your stress or helped you out? (Protective
factors)
3) What were the main factors you found in yourself that led to improvement in your
situation?

Here are the overview of the interviews of my friends (with slight narration of their
story/situation):

1st Case: My friend Kumar (of Chemical Engineering Department) has Attention-deficit/
hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). It is a mental illness that affects the way a person acts or pays
attention to something. Because of which people assume he is somewhat crazy as he is
hyperactive most of the time.

He is a real genius with a great mind and has much more memorising capability than a normal
human. For him studies are like part of life and he enjoys it. Unfortunately, his JEE Advanced
went a bit bad because of which he had to choose Chemical Engineering.
In the 5th semester, he almost lost interest in the courses or whatever they were teaching, he
did not feel it and he wasn’t able to connect with it. In the 4-5th semester he did very poorly in
academics.
He stopped interacting with people and did not talk to people. He just went to classes and then
back to the hostel. This happened because he had 2 good friends and both of them went for
foreign semester exchange and with some other friends the contact wasn’t that good. So the
interactive relationship with people reduced very much. This was the time he was going into too
much depression and was lonely as well. He started getting anxiety imbalances, mood swings.
Sometimes he was too happy and a few moments later he became very sad.

Then he consulted a doctor at the end of 5th semester and found that he had bipolar disorder.
He went more centered on social media and he became less fitness conscious, so the exercises
went nil in his daily routine. When he increased his physical exercises he got a bit better, and
started more interaction with people and with proper medications he is doing better now.

In this case:
1) Risk factors: Pre-existing disorder, No peer interactions, Loss of interest towards
academics
2) Protective factors: He went for counselling at the right time, started exercising, started
talking to more people.
3) Main factors you found in yourself that led to improvement in your situation: Sef-believe,
Resilience to bear with the situation

So, overall in this case the Secondary Prevention and Primary Enhancement led to the
betterment of Kumar

2nd Case: It is the case of my friend of 1st year. She is in the BioTech Department. When I
joined the Institute as a fresher our groups were next to each other. She had an year-back and
was repeating all the subjects again in the 1st year after failing in more than 5-6 subjects in all.

She had actually got a very low rank in JEE Advanced. She says that there were times when
she cared about academics when she was getting low marks in the starting of semesters. She
tried to study more and get better marks but failed to do so twice or thrice. After that she
observed that the efforts that she made were going in vain, meanwhile others scored well in that
same amount of study. Slowly slowly she became careless of the fact that she was getting low
marks and joined Volleyball sports. She went to play for it regularly and gave it her best in the
sport. Later she got selected for the Inter-IIT team but it came at the time of disaster when she
faced the complete year repeat.

The situations got worse for her as it was a disaster for her and her parents as well. Her inner
sense that wanted to try and make efforts died within. She had tried a lot not to fail but gave up
now. And this caused a lot of depression, sadness and her image in the campus, among friends
and relatives got spoiled. She cried a lot for many months thinking about the year repeat.
The good part in her case was that her parents became really supportive in this depression and
backed her up. Her close friends were all very very supportive and helped her gain confidence
again. Although, that confidence wasn’t long lasting as she was trying and still getting in the
repeating year. The best thing that happened to her was that the selection to the Inter-IIT sports
team indirectly compelled her to do too many physical exercises that made her fit.

Slowly, she recovered because of the supporting factors and the main factor out of them was,
she had started ignoring the burden of academics because she failed even after trying a lot.
So,she accepted the low marks and went on with it.

In this case:
1) Risk factors: Academic pressure, Loss of interest towards academics, Giving up easily
after few attempts, Fear of losing people, Fear of facing society
2) Protective factors: Right parenting, regular physical sport exercise, immense support
from close friends.
3) Main factors you found in yourself that led to improvement in your situation: Resilience to
bear with the situation and live with situation accepting the reality; Tolerance of negative
affect that developed slowly

So, overall in this case the Primary Enhancement was a huge factor for her in her recovery from
depressive times.

3rd Case: It is about my 1st year friend (currently in final year Textile Department) who has
been in depression for more than 3 years but is slowly improving. He found himself different
from the age of 15-16 but wasn’t aware of many things. When he came to Delhi in his 1st year
he got sure of himself that he was gay but could not tell anyone about it as he feared to loose all
the friends and thought of abandonment kept with away from coming out. After the 1st semester
of college life he started staying in the hostel room and always kept himself locked in a room.
His depression started to grow and till 2 years tried to hide himself from his friends and the
world for 2 years. He stopped going to classes as well. His grades degraded too much in the 1st
sem itself (as low as 5-6 CGPA).

Internally, his peace, his soul was completely destroyed as he did not know whom to tell and
whom to trust. Who would trust him and keep the friendship? These thoughts kept killing him
from time to time. He started to share it with 2 of his close friends and eventually some of his
hostel mates got to know about it. He came out 4-5 months ago on the NSS IITD page and
declared his pride.

He got over some depression because of good support from his close friends but hasn’t told
anything to his parents yet. Currently, when I took his interview he was at home and afraid that
his parents shouldn’t listen to this conversation while he is talking to me on call.
The acceptability of non-heterogeneous gender is increasing slowly in society but he is afraid of
what his parents would do if they came to know about it. He fears losing his normal life which is
throwing him more and more into the well of depression.
In this case:
1) Risk factors: Fear of losing people, Fear of facing society, Academic pressure, Fear of
unacceptability in society
2) Protective factors: Good support from close friends and surround of IIT Delhi
3) Main factors you found in yourself that led to improvement in your situation: None

Part II

Q.1- Give your general understanding of the importance and impact of mental health
workers in our society

Ans. In the past years, the emphasis on mental health has been growing worldwide and has
become a topic of major concern. The effects of mental health disorders are still underestimated
as compared to general health disorders.In many poor countries or In countries like India where
a vast population is poor, the mental health awareness is immensely low. It is seen that many
scuh countries lack mental health professionals because of the stigma of society that is
prevailing for a long long time.

These prevailing stigmas generally tend to victimise people having mental illness and eject them
from the society. In India, there is a general trend to disapprove of people with psychiatric
disabilities. There are some phrases always heard from people in society:’It is just your
imagination’, ‘It’s all in your head’, ‘You don’t look depressed’ and ‘Don’t waste money on
psychiatric in vain’...etc. Thus there is utmost need of mental health workers in countries like
India to help people get out of that stigma and save some lives.

The situation gets worse when society abandons these people from interacting and this leads to
further increase in the mental illness in the patient. The need of mental health awareness
campaigns are must to set a positive mindset in society. And in order to have such sessions, we
need more and more workers in this section to create legit impact and spread information. To
end the end to apathy regarding mental illness the awareness has to be both rural and urban
places via government outreach programs.

Q.2- Identify and elaborate any two contemporary and applied platforms which you
consider most effective in providing mental health services and resources to society at
large. Give reasons for its effectiveness.

Ans. In this contemporary world, I feel education on mental health should be given at first
place. As the time passes by, the mental health issues will keep on growing and growing. This
has started getting included in the curriculum of modern schools slowly. No matter what platform
you try to go on,YouTube or blogs or apps etc. it won’t be and can’t be equivalent to introducing
the subjects related to mental health in the curriculum of primary education. So, I feel it can be
the best way to avail mental health knowledge and resources at large. In this way, the
stigma in the society regarding mental illness will reduce immensely and in coming years people
won’t see it any different from physical illness. If this can be inculcated, it can be a very useful
resource to a big population of India and probably the cheapest way as well.

Secondly, I feel that virtual face to face counselling along with doing Yoga (practical
psychotherapy) is the way via which a lot of people can avail the mental health services. Since,
yoga (in Hindu Mythology) has been considered as really important, it’s knowledge is available
in most of the resources available. The virtual face to face counselling will make mental health
services much cheaper to avail and society's stigma factor will reduce a bit as one can visit a
psychiatrist at home itself. This will help a lot of people suffering from mental illness to come up
and take proper precautions.

References:

1) Ria Das Mukherjee, (2019). Mental Health Awareness: The Need To Combat Societal
Stigma