Jeevani- College Mental Health Awareness programme’ is a new venture introduced by Kerala Collegiate Education Department. The programme aims to address the mental health issues and to enhance the psychological wellbeing of students through individual counseling sessions, training classes and workshops.
ANNUAL REPORT OF JEEVANI CLUB –THE CENTRE FOR STUDENT WELLBEING
2020-21
Jeevani is a new initiative by Department of Kerala Collegiate Education to provide mental health services to students in Government Arts and Science Colleges. It was introduced in the academic year 2019-20.
As part of Jeevani programme, our college had provided a Jeevani Centre in the first floor of Our College Library in 2019-20 academic year itself and continued the same for this academic year too. Our college conducted an interview for appointing a Psychological apprentice for the academic year 2020-21 on 5th January 2021 at Principal’s chamber. The Principal, Subject expert, and Jeevani co ordinator were included in the interview panel. The Subject expert for the interview was Dr. Sujisha T G, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology , Sree Achutha Menon College, Kuttenellur. Ten applicants attended the same and the college appointed Smt. Betcy John as the Psychological Apprentice as per the criteria for the academic year 2020-21.As this academic year went through a Covid Scenario and regular classes were started only in December ,the Jeevani Centre for this academic year started its function on January 19th 2021. So this report confined to the activities held during the period of 19 th January 2021 to 31st March.
The working time of the Jeevani centre of our college have been arranged in such a manner that it will be open 30 minutes before and close 30 minutes after college working hours. It functioned during lunch time too.
As an initial step, the College made an opportunity to introduce the newly appointed psychologist before each and every student through orientation classes in various Departments. Various Orientation Classes held during the month of January and it helped a lot to reach out the idea about the need of mental health and the information that a psychologist ( a counsellor ) would be there in library for the students to share their fears and apprehensions.
As the second and final year students are quite known about the Jeevani Services, the Jeevani Centre focussed on 1st semester UG and PG classes for orientation in the month of January. The orientation program was mainly focused on the services offered by Jeevani centre, the importance of mental health among youths, especially the importance of stress management and how to develop mental health personally. Good cooperation and positive approach was received from the students. AS a result, students began to come forward for counselling. The number of students consulted during the month of January was very few in number as the students are quite new to the campus and the regular classes are held in the campus once in a week but it was improved in the month of February and March.
The Jeevani Centre conducted a small scale study to identify the level of resilience among college students in this academic year. The main purpose of the study was to measure the level of resilience of students in SNGS and to improve the resilience of all students by conducting an effective workshop on resilience for coming academic year, there for each student will be emotionally stable in the future. Therefore the data collected randomly from 142 students from different classes by two questionnaires . One questionnaire is for attaining a socio demographic data, which was developed by jeevani centre and the second was Bharathiar University resilience scale which was developed by Dr, Annalaksmi.
The jeevani centre celebrated Woman’s Day in collaboration with Women’s cell and NSS on March 8th 2021. We Organised three separate sessions, defence class, a talk on womens day theme and a street play for the development of mental, physical and cultural development among students especially girls. The first programme was on self defence class which handled by Arun, one of former student of our college ( Deksha Academy, koppam) and the programme lasted for one and half hour. He gave training on various simple self defence mechanism which can be used by girls in various insecure situations. The second session was a talk based on 2021 women’s day theme ( Choose to challenge) and it was handled by Betcy John ( Psychologist, Jeevani centre) . As the final programme, the Street Play was held by Savithri and team( NSS volunteers) . More than 160 students were participated in this program.
As part of one day NSS unit leadership training ( on March 5, 2021) one hour talk was held by Betcy John ( psychologist, Jeevani centre) , it was based on the importance of handling emotions and the characteristics of emotional intelligence, almost 100 students of first semester UG were participated in this event.
As this academic year couldn’t have regular classes as usual academic year, Number of cases consulted the assigned psychologist are 12 during this three months period . Number of follow up took place during this period was 15 .Two clinically identified case were referred to nearby Psychiatrist for the pharmacological support and conducted a group counselling for a student with parents.
It can be concluded by stating that,as the future plan proposed in the 2019-20 academic year , the jeevani centre couldn’t function in this academic year. The seldom held classes and availability of Psychological Apprentice for only 3 months period made hurdles in the implementation of proposed action plan. Yet the Jeevani Centre functioned through offline and online within the constraints and became a centre for mental wellbeing of many.
Bisha V K
Jeevani Coordinator