203 - Jab life ho out of control... IIT-B sings 'all izz well' dna

Jab life ho out of control... IIT-B sings 'all izz well'

Thursday, Jul 18, 2013, 10:20 IST | Agency: DNA

Kanchan Srivastava  

Around 800 new students admitted in various B Tech courses this year in IIT Bombay will undergo a comprehensive counselling programme within a week of joining. The Institute has chalked out a half-day workshop on “Preventive Mental Health” to be conducted by end of July and which is mandatory for all students to attend.

The workshop aims to boost students’ “mental and emotional well-being”.
Students will learn how to tackle homesickness, deals with hostel conflicts and take on the academic pressure that comes with a robust curriculum. A panel of experts from Tata Institute of Social Sciences and other institutes has been invited to conduct the workshop. The new academic year starts on Thursday.

Most first year students are teenagers. As all the IIT courses in are essentially residential, all of them will be staying in hostels which might be a new experience to most of them.

Prof Urjit Yajnik, dean of students affair, told dna, “We have permanent counselling at the campus for students. This year we decided to start off with a comprehensive session also, so that students know better how to deal with situations before they become too complex or get out of hand.”

The workshop will also be attended by senior students who play the role of the “mentor” to new students. IITs had started a mentor programme a couple of years ago to support first year students.

According to a professor, several first year students need counselling during the course for various reasons including homesickness, academic pressure and conflicts that come with shared hostel rooms. “Senior students have a different set of emotional problems altogether, which includes relationship and career issues,” he added.

Shivani Manchanda, counsellor at IIT B who is finalising the finer details of the preventive mental health session, says, “Loneliness and homesickness is what a new student feels once he/she joins. On the other hand, for some students from a rural background it’s a cultural shock to shift from a vernacular medium curriculum to an English curriculum. At the same time, they have to adjust with roommates and also handle academic pressure.”

This workshop aims to address all those issues and the students will be told to approach counsellor if they can’t handle any emotional situation. Several cases of suicide have been reported in IITs in the past, which alerted the authorities, forcing them to establish counselling centres in the campus.

129 - IIT launches confession box to help students vent woes - TOI

CHENNAI: Confessions can help save lives. The idea has prompted Indian Institute of Technology - Madras to encourage students to share their experiences and feelings on an Online Confession Box to help them cope with stress caused by academic and parental pressures orbroken relationships. "It's not always easy to find a person you can trust to talk to at any time of the day. Sometimes you just have to hear yourself talking about the issue to somebody, just rant. At such times, an online confession box helps," said a second year student, who declined to be named.

Students can log on to the Online Confession Box on the social networking page of the General Counselling Unit (GCU) and speak out while remaining anonymous. They can also seek help from behavioural experts through the confession box. There have been three suicides at IIT-M this year, spurring the institution to launch mental health initiatives, including a 24-hour helpline manned by behavioural experts and the social networking page offering tips on how to handle stress and identify psychological disorders like a obsessive compulsive disorder.

The revamped GCU is to be named Mitr. "For several years, GCU was in fire-fighting mode, helping students in distress. Now, we are trying to take preventive measures," said GCU head Sivakumar Srinivasan.

Other IITs too have launched similar initiatives. IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi have student mentor programmes that identify senior students on whom freshers can bank on to guide and help them handle academic and co-curricular issues. It has been found that while 35% of students at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and 45% in Harvard seek help for mental health issues, only 5% of students come to the GCU.

"This is because of the stigma attached to going to hospital for such issues. So we have come up with ideas for students to get help online through social networking sites, talks by alumni on topics, and addressing them as a group in the hostel to give tips on, say, 'How to study whenfriends keep dropping in'," Sivakumar said.

Alumni have also offered support in many ways. Raju Venkatraman of the 1981 batch, who started Medall Healthcare, has tied up with IIT-M to provide 24-hour assistance through tele-counselling with behavioural experts. "At one of our discussions in the Centre for Alumni Relations Enhancements, we asked for suggestions. One of the first to respond was Raju, who said he would help them handle behavioural issues," said advisor at IIT-M's office of alumni affairs R Nagarajan.

The GCU is also trying to get alumni who have gone through tough times to talk to students. "If an alumnus who was into substance abuse in college can talk about how it affected his life and how he overcame it, it will get students to kick the habit," said Sivakumar.

The manpower at GCU has been strengthened to include 15 faculty volunteers and five head student counsellors. They will co-ordinate with 100 students across departments and hostels. Medall Healthcare has given students and faculty the first level of training in counselling to identify those in need of help.

128 - 1986 batch to give IIT students a professional counselling service - Indian Express

mihikabasu

Posted: Mon Nov 21 2011, 02:49 hrs

Mumbai:

To address the academic and psychological problems faced by students of IIT Bombay, the focus of the institute’s 1986 batch will be to establish a dedicated “counselling services programme”. The initiative is part of the legacy project of the 1986 batch, titled “student quality of life improvement”. The former students are getting together next month for their silver jubilee reunion.

“With increase in student suicide rates, there is an immediate need to address academic, emotional and psychological attributing factors faced by the students. Accordingly, there is a need to establish and enhance a professional counselling service programme at IIT Bombay,” said Sandeep Pandya from the 1986 batch, who is also treasurer of the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund (IITBHF).

The programme, says a white paper on the project, will look at recruiting professional, high-quality medical/psychological counsellors and creating a collaborative programme to leverage expertise and assistance from top medical/psychological institutes in Mumbai. It will also focus on formalising and providing mentoring services through the alumni community to help with career counseling and industry mentoring.

The batch aims to raise Rs 2.25 crore for their legacy project, where 50 per cent of the contributions are expected to come alumni in India and the rest from those abroad. “The 1986 batch legacy is to strengthen existing and create new programmes related to students and is the first batch to adopt this approach,” says the white paper.

Part of the project will look at strengthening the existing “financial aid programme (FAP)” for needy students of IIT Bombay. “The FAP has been successful over the past five years since its founding. The programme has issued 870 loans to over 480 students, disbursing Rs 1.7 crore. There’s an immediate need to fund this project as intake of needy students is increasing. In addition, there is a government proposal on the table to potentially increase IIT tuition fees in the coming years, further posing financial challenge to students,” said Nilesh Vani from the 1986 batch.

Accordingly, the former students will continue to support the project and create a growing endowment. “We are very happy that the 1986 batch has decided to support the financial aid programme which had been initiated by the 1981 batch and aims to make IIT education financially available to everyone. This will help the programme grow into a huge, sustainable project in years to come,” said Bakul Desai, member of the board of directors, IIT Bombay Alumni Association (IITBAA).