Child mental health plan to be launched in schools

Rawalpindi

The ‘champion’ teachers trained by the national trainers in WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region (WHO EMRO) manual School Mental Health Programme (SMHP) here at the Institute of Psychiatry and WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health Research and Training at Benazir Bhutto Hospital would implement the programme in their respective schools of Rawalpindi district under constant supervision of the trainers.

To evaluate the impact of the programme, an independent evaluation will be conducted by the trained research teams and on the basis of the results of the evaluation; the programme would be scaled-up further to the next level.

The objectives of the training imparted to teachers were to help educators understand the importance of mental health promotion in a school setting and incorporating mental health into “Healthy Schools Initiatives” along with providing age–appropriate behavioural management strategies including disciplining and management of disruptive behaviour.

The training would help teachers to identify the warning signs of mental illness in school children and distinguishing that from emotional distress along with providing further resources that can be accessed by educators.

Maintaining its decade’s long tradition of promotion and prevention of mental health through its community outreach programme, the training workshop for school teachers was hosted by the institute from September 26 to 28 with a purpose of training a cohort of ‘champion’ teachers nominated by the education department of Rawalpindi district.

Head of the Institute and WHO Collaborating Centre at BBH Professor Fareed Aslam Minhas expressed this to ‘The News’. He said that child mental health has been identified as a priority within the WHO’s Eastern Mediterranean Region (WHO EMRO) and following consultations with international and regional experts and stakeholders, the WHO EMRO has developed an evidence-based manual School Mental Health programme (EMRO SMHP), endorsed by all member countries. The programme is aimed at those involved in education including teachers, administrators, nurses, social workers, and school counsellors. It emphasises strategies that can be implemented at low-cost and at scale, incorporating key principles of task-shifting and targeting a non-specialist mental health workforce, he explained.

It is important that the accompanying implementation framework proposes a three-step model for intervention adaptation, implementation and evaluation to serve as a basis for the scale-up of EMRO SMHP in WHO EMRO member countries. The step 1 is training of the national trainers from the WHO EMRO member countries by the master trainers, step 2 is training of the ‘champion’ teachers by the national trainers and step 3 is implementation and evaluation of the WHO EMRO SMHP in a pilot tehsil followed by scale-up of the programme to district, province and national levels. The training workshop for teachers at the institute is part of the second step; the in-country training of ‘champion’ teachers. According to Professor Minhas, the ‘champion’ teachers were trained to competency by the national trainers in the WHO EMRO SMHP. The teachers also conducted a second level of adaptation of the WHO EMRO SMHP to suit the local context and needs, he said.

He added that the training workshop followed a participatory approach including group works, discussions, presentations and role-plays.