The Department of Psychiatric Social Work at NIMHANS in collaboration with the Centre for Well Being at the institute held the second Well Being volunteer conference at its premises on Saturday.
The conference was attended by more than 100 Well Being volunteers from across the Southern States. To bring together a group of volunteers and train them to provide curative, preventive, and promotive mental health services in the community, NIMHANS initiated the Well Being Volunteers (WBV) programme in 2016. The first conference was held last year.
Additional professor, Psychiatric Social Work, E. Aravind Raj, who is the WBV coordinator at NIMHANS, said overall 290 members have been enrolled in the programme in eight batches since inception.
As part of this program, for four months, every Saturday, a group of shortlisted candidates from different walks of life would be trained on promotive, preventive, and psychosocial intervention aspects of mental health through participatory methodology.
“The modules include psychosocial competencies among children, stress management, addiction, suicide prevention strategies, basic counselling skills, identification of mental health problems in the community, and home visit/telephone services,” Prof. Raj said.
Followed by training, with the supervision of NIMHANS faculty, Well Being volunteers come forward to provide support to patient and outpatient departments, making stalls on mental health in different parts of the city, conducting stress management programs at organizations, facilitating mental health-related workshops in apartment associations, referrals for needy persons, mobilising resources for medicines and treatment among other related aspects. The volunteers trained here are spread across different States,” the doctor said.
Former NIMHANS faculty and Padma Shree Awardee C.R. Chandrashekar and NIMHANS director Pratima Murthy inaugurated the conference. They felicitated the 8th Well Being Volunteers who recently finished their course.
