Roshni Nilaya students provide psycho-social care to disaster affected people in Uttarakhand

Mangalore, Nov 22: A team of 13 psycho-social counsellors from the School of Social Work, Roshni Nilaya trained by National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Bangalore, were constituted into four sub-teams and deployed at disaster-affected villages at five different locations in Uttarakhand to assist the victims traumatised by the floods that occurred there earlier this year.

Speaking at a press conference here on Friday, team leader Chongtham Odessey Singh told mediapersons that each team visited all the families where life and property loss has occurred in villages in Kalimath, Guptkashi, Ukhimath, Augustmuni and Phata areas in Uttarakhand. Divided into four sub-teams, the team members provided the families in 53 villages with psycho-social care over a period of 18 days. The team members also gauged the mental health of the individuals and created referrals for those who required further intervention by qualified and professional psychiatrists. Apart from directly-affected family members, the mental health was gauged for those who have survived the disaster or witnessed it in any way, he said.

Speaking on the difficulties faced by the survivors of the disaster, he said that the livelihood of the families in disaster-affected areas had been hit hard. The village folk in the mountainous terrain in the state of Uttarakhand are mainly dependent on mules and tourism for their livelihood. Along with the loss of their source of income, few families have also lost their mules in the floods. Also, an entire generation in the age group of 14 – 45 has been wiped out in the floods, and the families are now left without any source of income. The survivors, mostly women and children, have also been traumatised by the disaster. Psycho-social counselling was done by team members at the field-level when required, he said, adding that those who were heavily traumatised by the tragedy were referred to NIMHANS for further intervention.

“As a result, a referral base was created and about 120 cases were referred for persons who required further intervention with regard to mental health,” he said.

He said that few survivors of the tragedy had been heavily traumatised, to the extent of having recurring flashbacks, and required intervention to cope up with the aftermath of the tragedy.

The team, led by Mr Singh, were involved in providing pyscho-social care to victims and survivors from October 16 to November 6.

Team members Rohan D'Souza and Avinand Achanahally, along with Mr Singh, assisted in relief work in 11 villages in Kalimath area, Sreejesh O V, Lijish Lawrence, I J Mathew and Abdul Irshad in 12 villages in Guptkashi and Ukhimath areas, Prakash Lobo, Beerasidd Kamate and Salman Khan in 10 villages in Augustmuni area, and Cosmos Joseph, Suman Raj and Lavesh P K in 20 villages in Phata area.