 Mildusmita are you there? Yes, sir. Okay, so we will start. This is our will be joining shortly once whenever he joins then we will immediately start. Yes, sir. Just wait for two, three minutes and then we will. Okay. Hi Dr. Mita, how are you? You are on mute? Hello. Yeah, who is speaking? I can't make out. Yeah, this is Sangeeta here. Sangeeta is here. Congratulations, you're off your manual and off to take off. Yes, just about to. Yeah. Going on with the video work now. Thank you. Start your program. Yeah, I have to start the first course. I think we are actually trying to complete the videos by this month, by the next month. So should be able, but I think the workshop mode will go on most probably by end of July or August. We have one group coming who is working on women and children and mitigating violence against them. But then I think the online will start off by end of August or September, as soon as they are ready with the video. Okay, end of August, September. Okay, okay. We're just waiting because there's so many small, small, you know, videos, clipings that we have. Lots of little things. I know all those minute DPS are taking a lot of time. But anyway, good to finish by most probably August. Yes. Yeah, good, good. Good afternoon, everyone. We will start as soon as our vice chancellor sir joins. So please wait for a few minutes. Sir, I think vice is here. I saw his name. Yes. Yes, he's here. Okay. Okay. Let's start. Okay, just start. Yes. So good afternoon. And I welcome you all to this today's discussion on pandemic and mental health issue. It is evident that COVID has affected the lives of 7.9 billion world population in different ways, cutting across different classes, gender, age and geographical location. So social and community bonds are widely disrupted. And at every moment, there is fear of one losing one's own life and dear one's life. So as a result, people are reportedly falling victims of severe anxiety. In order to meet the current needs, we must scale up both the physical and mental health services and infrastructure. However, the question is, has mental health issues been given due weightage and importance as compared to one's physical health? For example, who had recently stated that on an average at the national level, countries dedicate just 2% of their health budgets to mental health. And during this pandemic, we see that this is one of the darkest periods that the world has ever seen. And in order to overcome this crisis, we must focus on strengthening our mental health. As it is said that energy flows where intention goes. There lies innumerable challenges to deal with a pandemic situation. Therefore, today's lecture is of immense significance and this discussion on pandemic and mental health issues has been organized in an attempt to understand the different aspects of the project matter and how we can deal with this crisis situation. Today we have with us three distinguished speakers who are mental health experts. Dr. Anita Rego, Dr. Shobhna, Dr. Sangeeta Goswami. Myself, Mridushmita Dora from the Discipline of Social Work, School of, School of Social Sciences, and also on behalf of Padmanath Kuhayi Borua School of Humanities of KK Hendrick State Open University would like to welcome our Honorable Vice Chancellor, Professor Kandarpadas, Respected Speakers, Dr. Anita Rego, Dr. Shobhna, and Dr. Sangeeta Goswami, all the respected professors, my colleagues, and all the participants to today's program. We are indeed privileged to have you all with us today. Now, I would like to request our Honorable Vice Chancellor to offer his inaugural speech. Sir. Am I audible? Yes, sir. Okay. So good afternoon to all. It is indeed a privilege for me to welcome you all to this special webinar on Pandemic and Mental Health Issues. And we have amongst us three eminent personalities who have specialized in this field and they will speak on the topic. Now, as distance education provider, the Christakanta Hendrick State Open University is well aware of the limitations and problems faced by our learners, faculty members, staff, and general public. The pandemic has not only created a situation amongst the general public, but it has created a very different kind of atmosphere amongst the students community at large. Now, school colleges have been closed for a long time. The children are in a very difficult situation where they have no place to go and play. They are confined within the four walls of their apartment, those who live in the apartments. Of course, those who live in the villages have little advantages. They can go out and play a little bit. But basically, the children living in metropolitan cities, those who live in apartments have a very difficult time. Not only that, even the village children, those are deprived of the normal life for a long time, deprived of the school atmosphere, meeting their friends, relatives for such a long time, have a severe impact on their mental setup. And it is very difficult to imagine the situation when we used to be children, never, ever even for an hour or two. During the day, we could not stay at home. Now the children, these children are confined at home for such a long time. When they have to attend classes, using the computers, they have to converse with their friends only with the use of WhatsApp or maybe telephones. Now the mental disturbance is by them as well as the adult students, even the students who studied in KK and State Open University, who are relatively called lifelong learners, even they are facing a very difficult kind of situation. Now in this situation, it is our duty to find out the ways how to deal with this equation, how to provide the mental and psychological support to our learners, our children, their parents, general public, even our staff, teachers, officers, and also all concerned with our university. So we hope today's webinar will provide us some kind of way out how to deal with the situation, how to act in this difficult time, because we all know we are very stressed, mentally stressed, all of us are stressed and in this stress situation, definitely unless and until we talk to our experts, we do not know how to proceed. So I believe today's webinar will provide us some guidelines, how to deal with the situation, how to deal with our learners, how to deal with our employees, how to deal with our teachers, how to deal with our officers. So with this, I welcome all the evidence speakers, Anita Rego, Sovana and Dr. Sangeeta Busami for this webinar and I formally declared this webinar inaugurated. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for sharing some important facts about today's topic. Now I would like to request our director, Professor Joy DeBorua of Kulja Kumar Bhuya School of Social Sciences to speak a few words and also to introduce our three evidence speakers. Sir. Thank you. Honourable vice-sensors, sir. My colleague at the director of Guhaiburva School of Humanities who is collaborating us in organizing this web discussion today, Pranjeet Bora and other directors and professors, colleagues, participants, friends and students. This is a very important program and I take the privilege of welcoming you everyone to this program. Just in terms of format that we have decided just to make a very initial comment on this, that we have planned this as a workshop but we have problems in organizing online workshops. It is difficult. So what we have planned actually, initially the panelists will speak for 15 to 20 minutes and to just to initiate the discussion and then basically we will concentrate mostly on Q&A question and answers from the participants. The purpose as Honourable Vice-Sensors has already pointed out are twofold. One is to understand the kinds of issues that have emerged during this pandemic and number two, to deal with those kinds of issues. So the speakers will first generate a kind of common understanding regarding different issues which are coming up which we may not be aware of that these are the issues and then we will also look forward to hear from them regarding how to deal with those issues. So these are the very simple two objectives and the success of this discussion will be based on active participation. So therefore all the participants, we have some around 300 close to 390 plus participants today. So they will put up the questions in the chat box and we have requested my colleagues in the school to note down and conduct, Medusmita will leave of course the moderation and then to ask the questions. The questions can be asked in Assamese also because most of the learners are also from Assamese but they may not be very comfortable in English. So we will get it translated to experts and experts will try to respond. I believe the Sangita Baidu can also answer directly in Assamese and if others speakers feel comfortable speaking in Hindi or in some accessible kind of thing, they are most welcome to answer in that language as well. So with these initial comments regarding the format of today's program we have, I have the privilege of introducing key Eminence Speaker's panelists today. The first we have Dr. Anita Rago who is a mental health professional with ampillant PhD in psychiatric social work from Nimhans Bangalore. She has professional experiences spanning over three decades where she has been actively engaged in issues related to reproductive health, maternal neonatal child survival, gender equality, gender-based violence, adults and health and disability. So she has provided long and short term technical advisory and support to UNICEF, UNDP, USAID and other international organizations and she also prolifically contributes to academic and professional journals on a regular basis on these themes and related areas. So I think the honor of welcoming you, Madam Anita Rago. Next panelist is Dr. Shobana who is a psychiatric social work professional, academician and couple and family therapist. She is the President of Association of Psychiatric Social Work Professional, APSWP. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatric Social Work, a look of your Gopinath Borla Regional Institute of Mental Health in Tech School and over the last 10 and a half years she has been there. She has done her ampillant PhD from Nimhans Bangalore again, a post-doctoral fellowship from University of Florida. She has been offering therapeutic services for persons with emotional problems and mental disorders for the last 20 years. She is actively engaged in academic training and research supervision and she also writes regularly in academic journals and professional places. So welcome Dr. Shobana H. M. for today's discussion and last but not least we have our own Sangeeta Gukswami. She is a well-known and leading counseling psychologist who have set up independent counseling clinic in North East India in 1996. In 2006 she established Mind India, the Institute of Positive Mental Health and Research. Mind India is an endeavor dedicated to cause of ushering in the benefits of positive mental health and well-being to general population. In last 25 years her service as counseling psychologist Dr. Gukswami has been providing counseling and psychotherapy to individuals with issues related to adjustment problems, anxiety, depression, work stress, career, academics, marries and family counseling. Dr. Gukswami is running comprehensive multidisciplinary mental wellness center under Mind India which is one of its kind in entire office. So we have very illustrious panel of three speakers today. They will raise the issues and also they will also concentrate on how to deal with those issues. So with these initial remarks may I now request Madam Onita Rago kindly to begin and make her presentation first and then we will follow up and then we will pick up the Q&A. So thank you everyone and welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. Thank you Professor Das, the Vice Chancellor, Professor Joydeep Varua and other academicians. I also thank the students and the staff for being there in large numbers. Today when I speak about COVID it reminds me of the last one year nobody thought that we would go through this whole journey. Nobody was ready for it. However, we managed and we have survived. A lot of us have lost our close family members and it is painful but we are in this journey. If you look at the whole concept of COVID, effects most of us believe that COVID affects us at our own individual and family levels. However, if you really look at it, it has destroyed our families. It has to some extent questioned the existence of our very institutions, our educational institutions, our hospitals, our places of worship and several other things, a whole business that's existing. You also have at the larger level, at the national level, our health ministries, our rural development ministries, our developmental ministry. So if you look at it at every point, COVID has affected every single bit of our lives and however, when it comes to personal level, it has really disturbed families because unexpectedly young people, people without without other comorbidities, sometimes people with comorbidities, people who are elderly have lost their lives and have gone into extreme health problem which has disturbed the mental health of people. So it is generally said that mental health is a hidden epidemic which follows COVID pandemic. Many of us would have experienced that we are feeling a sense of fear, a sense of anger, a sense anger towards probably the governments, probably towards the hospitals, probably towards the lack of infrastructure. It has led to us to feel sad, worried, feel that okay, there's a sense of frustration. Many of the people moved from home to work from home situations and the very fact that you are in a new circumstance, you are facing a new transition in life, a new way of doing things, you have started feeling difficulty in concentrating at your work, making decisions, be it at health or at work. Many of my people whom I counsel have reported sleeping disorders have spoken about severe stress that they feel which presents itself through anxiety, depression, uncomfort in the gut region, a sense of sleeplessness. People who have had medical symptoms probably have felt that may not have reached the hospitals for the very fear of what will happen to me. Some of their symptoms have exacerbated and they probably have not been able to really have a very good healthcare system and that has led to a lot of discomfort and mental health issues. You also are hearing that people who are working from home or people who are staying at home do not know how to pass their times have gone, got into drinking. Many of the people who have been drinking may have worsened their drinking or there are youth and teenagers who probably have got access to hard drugs. Antonio Gutres, the UN Secretary General of the UN has said that unless until we act now to address the mental issues and needs associated with the pandemic, there will be enormous long-term consequences for the families, communities and societies and he's called up on the governments around the world to take mental health consequences very seriously and ensure that mental health support is available. To some extent that's why one of the reasons why you see that COVID centers have been attached to the mental health units in almost all the hospitals across the country. Now when we speak about mental health, let's first understand what is mental health. Mental health is defined by WHO as a state of well-being in which an individual realizes his or own abilities, can cope with normal stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her community which means that when a person who is mentally ill, the person is not able to use his or her own capabilities, cannot cope with normal stresses, cannot do productive work effectively and cannot contribute to life as a whole. Having a good mental health is the foundation of individual's well-being and it is most important when we want to have societies functioning effectively. Be it your community setup, be it your workplaces, be it your parliamentary systems or your educational institute, everywhere we need to speak about mental health and see that mental health is assured in COVID times. When we look at mental illness, what is it that really gets affected? When we look at mental health, it is a disorder of the mood of the person, the thought processes, the perceptions, the orientations and memory. So if you look at it in that simple sense, it affects the way you think, the way you feel and the way you behave. So the three dominant areas which are required for our functioning in life get affected. Studies have shown that when COVID has affected people, there are two levels that people got affected. There is this group which is who probably have mental illness as much before COVID initiated and those people, they have probably had experienced new symptoms during the period of COVID and those there are people who have been functioning normally, their family lives are perfect, their work has been going well. However, COVID has made a difference in their life and they have started showing symptoms of anxiety, depression, sleeplessness and all the other symptoms that I mentioned earlier. So if you look at people who are with existing mental illnesses, what has happened to them? So to study that, the Lancet studied three cohorts of people, people who had anxiety, people who had depression and people who had body before and after COVID. They found out that people with existing mental health conditions experience a detrimental effect on their mental status and they needed to continue the treatment that they had. However, they did not have a really a worsening of symptoms or a really detrimental effect in that sense to the extreme extent. This was just an exacerbation of their existing symptoms. It did not make them worse up. When there was another class of people, a lot of us were told during the COVID times that you have to wash your hands, you have to wear your mask. There were a lot of actions that were expected of us and those people who had obsessive compulsive disorder, what do you mean by obsessive compulsive disorder? A person actually repeatedly carries out an action without which the person starts feeling anxious and has high levels of anxiety and sometimes a person might do compulsive actions to overcome the obsessive thoughts. And those people who had existing symptoms, those people who had existing symptoms, they had a higher chance of an exacerbation and they also presented with generalized anxiety disorders and also specific major depressive disorders. It's not only that the people who had mental illnesses had problems, it was also the journey community I said who were functioning normally before COVID also started showing symptoms. If you look at what are the different types of symptoms that people came up with, they had anxiety and if you look at the range that is that it was from 6% to 50%, a lot of these studies have come from China, Spain, Italy, Iran, US, Turkey, Nepal, Denmark. They had depression symptoms that is from 14% to 48% in about half of the purple who had COVID had these symptoms. You had people showing post-traumatic stress disorder. You had people having psychological distress and most importantly people were expressing stress. Now who are the people who were at higher risk? The people who were at higher risk included females who are younger at age, who had presence of chronic psychiatric disorders which I said earlier and people who had who were unemployed. So if you really look at those groups now having said about the general public, what happens to special categories of people? People from the special category showed those who had pre-existing depressive symptoms, especially in the elderly and also felt that their access to mental health services actually worsened during that period. People who were mentally ill or who were homeless felt that they risked the fear of getting admitted because against their own will because there was a rounding up if you remember what happened in the first phase. People from on the streets were rounded up and then they were put in shelters and many of them landed up in the mental hospitals because the shelters were not able to take care of them even though they did not have an exacerbation of symptoms. Migrant populations were extremely distressed because we have seen how the migrants got greatly affected in the first phase and they were displaced, their works where work life got disturbed, they were on the street, their jobs, their dignified life was suddenly in question and they were no longer looked as contributing members of the economy, they were just left out in the open and their emotional states also got greatly affected. There's more research that is coming up to say that there is a relationship between COVID-19, stress, anxiety and depression. This has also been seen in the neonatal to have adverse effects on people who have had health problems and those who have were pregnant and were post-delivery. Many of these symptoms when we say in the general community may have been sub-syndromal. When we say syndromal it is that clinically we have a certain classificate symptom where we use it to identify whether the person is ill or not ill. So a lot of the people had sub-syndromal mental health problems. However when we look at sub-syndromal mental health problems we also need to look at what does it look in the whole spectrum. You have on one side people who have no illness on the other side you have people who have mental illnesses. So if you look at it in that sense some people might have had minimal mental disorders not really diagnosable but have had difficulty in relating difficulty in making decisions, difficulty in going on with their day-to-day lives. So most of them are sub-syndromal. Now there were people who might have had serious mental disorders like extreme anxiety, quite an intense depression. However they have managed to cope well. A lot of the marital problems that you see are also in the sense people might have had certain amount of mental disorders which have only aggravated their marital issues or their work-life issues or any other activities. But however they have managed they have not reached out to a professional they have tried to handle it by themselves. And then there are those who have had a diagnosis that means that they have come to a clinical setup evaluated themselves, got themselves treated and we are aware that they had a clinical diagnosis and some of them might have had poor mental health. Now coming to what happened in the psychiatric hospitals. We have two reports from China which suggested that what happened to the patients were pre-existing psychiatric disorders. There was one single breakout of COVID-19 in a psychiatric hospital and this affected around 30 patients and 50 patients and 30 staff. The reasons that were noted were that they had the hospitals were overcrowded. They had lack of general health services. The facilities in the psychiatric hospitals were not of adequate enough. There was lack of knowledge among the mental health professionals about COVID and they did not have adequate cooperation from the patients. And this wasn't because especially with people who had psychotic disorders. And hence the hospital saw a higher relapse of worsening of existing symptoms and difficulties in managing these patients at the hospital. Having said that we have no such reports from psychiatric hospitals in the country. Another important thing that we saw was the health anxiety that people faced and this actually arose because a lot of people felt that they couldn't understand because the symptoms like you have a cough, people started getting worried, you have little breathing difficulty, people started getting worried. So every bodily sensation that the person had or any change that happened to the body, people thought it was an outbreak. They had symptoms of COVID and they started really getting anxious and worried. And you had a lot of media information also that was going along and that really heightened, put the country on a very high spectrum of anxious people. And many of them demonstrated this through maladaptive behaviors like they refused to go to the hospitals. They were avoiding any interaction with medical personnel. This also led to a lot of hoarding behaviors where people started hoarding sanitizers, they started hoarding masks. So you see a lot of misplaced behaviors that came in. It also heightened the mistrust with the healthcare professionals, with the government, with a lot of people because they were not sure of whether the services that they got were of adequate quality, whether the doctors were really describing the right medicines, if they had ventilators, will they get admission. So there was a whole lot of concerns that rose from the communities. And that really led to a whole lot of, and this was only aggravated by the media messaging that was happening. Another category of people who got a lot of discussion came in the discussion was the healthcare professionals. When we say healthcare professionals, I also want to bring in the NGO workers also because they were on the front lines. Now what happened at the healthcare workers was that they also started showing symptoms of COVID and that increased the risk perception among the healthcare workers. They started feeling that what if I die? What if I get infected? What will happen to my children if I go on a ventilator? Where will I go? Will I be able to really come out of the whole illness? And this led to anxiety, depression, insomnia, and all the other symptoms that I mentioned in the earlier phase. And the brunt of it to a great extent was with the ward boys, the sanitation workers, the nurses, the doctors because the ones who were on the front line and who were directly handling a lot of the COVID related workers were the lower, people at the lower jobs and they did not really get recognised and they continued to go back and live in their own houses and infecting their own family members. So infection actually spread within their families also and they started having deaths in their families. So there is a certain amount of guilt that the person carries because I'm working in a health sector. I probably had an infection in my house and I lost my family member because of that. Why do the healthcare workers really become important? One is at their own emotional level. At the second level, we have to look at health workers getting disturbed, having mental health issues, a problem because when a mental health worker, when a health professional is not in the best of his mental health, he or she cannot really carry out his work to the best level that is required. So if you really look at it, there was this doctor who quoted this, if we have to deal with people that are in panic, we have to be well supported. That way we will have fewer medical errors, fewer issues in the hospital, less stress and panic. I'm wondering myself if this corona period is a big alarm, a wake up call to invest in human capacity. So and as I said, the reasons why they felt this was that there was a lot of unpredictability, there was a lot of uncertainty. Illness was not simple, it was quite fatal in that sense. There was a lot of misinformation and no information at some point, half knowledge, social isolation. So all this added to the whole thing to make people really in a disturbed state of mind. In addition to that, you had the economic impact of COVID. Recently, the APPI has come out with an economic impact in India. So I'm not really, I'm not brought in those slides because then I'll have to get. But from their study, what we hear is that the younger population, which is from 15 to 25 are the most affected. Women have got out of their jobs because they have been pushed out of their jobs and they have landed up as domestic in their home spaces. So which means that whatever gains that we have done in the country over the years, we have lost them to a great extent. And this has really disturbed the social capital that is there. Physical ill health also has worsened and we have seen that the great depression. There was a lot of ill health and people started getting cardiopathies and other health problems. And we have seen it even in our own country where health problems became complicated. I think this is a period where a lot of people died because of health problems. Probably it's because of the lack of willingness to reach out to the hospitals as early periods. There's another component that comes in is the stigmatization that happened. You've heard on the newspapers that doctors were not given space to live in their own flats and they had to move out and government had to provide them alternate living spaces. You had people who got COVID and got cured. The communities just walked away from them. So there's a whole lot of stigma that came in as part of COVID. And the same Dr. Pettises says that just the fact of someone wondering if he's positive for COVID is like having a stigma and something that is threatening his life. And that affects, of course, his behavior. We know very well that panic leads to bad behavior and to psychosomatic problems as well. And that brings on somatic problems very, very easily. And we need to be careful and delicate with how we handle this. Now if you look at our own mental health, if you put it on a scale of 1 to 10, how bothersome has it become to you? Is it a little bit or a little at a moderate level or at a severe level? So how do I know where do I stand? So to understand that, if you look at this whole color diagram, the rainbow diagram that I have, we have healthy at one end. Second would come in as reacting. Third is injured and the fourth is ill. So healthy people are people who are functioning normally, are working and contributing to society. The second one are the reacting ones who are slightly becoming irritable, impatient, not able to really be, they are on the edge. They express a sense of worry and sadness. They are forgetful. They are not able to attend to life course, chose in the same way. Then those that have functionally impaired, which means that they are able to express extreme signs of anxiety and depression, which impacts their day to day functioning. They are not able to perform at academics. They are not able to do their work properly. They are not able to sleep well and they are avoiding situations or withdrawing from situations. And then you have those who have clinical disorders and they are persistent and functionally impaired. And these will experience extreme distress and emotions in thought processes such as report high levels of anxiety and panic attack. They might express severe mood disorders and might be overwhelmed, are tired, fatigued and are not able to do a lot of things in life. And these significant changes that are happening might affect their thought processes and their behavior. Some of them might be suicidal. So if you are in the green and the yellow, you probably will be able to manage with simple self-care and supportive systems within your home and your friends circle your office spaces. But those who have mood where to functional impairment, significant functional impairment or have clinical disorders, they need professional care. And that is where Shobna or Sangeeta would be coming in here. So we cannot, we probably have realized that we cannot control anything and all that we can do is to choose and react. Just to give you a small story, suppose you have a frog who is put in a cooker and you start heating the water from the bottom, you put it, put the cooker on a gas. What will the frog do? The frog will start adjusting and adjusting and adjusting to a point that the frog is able to do. At some point in time, when the water reaches a higher temperature, the frog realizes that I cannot really manage my body. And it is when the frog tries to jump out. But the frog has, at this point when the pressure becomes too high, the frog is not able to jump out because it has given up all the strength and adjusting to the rising or temperature. And in the end, the frog is really not able to survive. What do you think killed the frog? Is it the heat of the water? No. The actually the frog was unable to get out of the circumstances at the right time or was able to seek services at the right time. So in life, when we face situations, we probably need to take appropriate actions and reach out to services. If we are in a stressful situation and we continue to be in the stressful situation, we might lose our power to really move through the trajectory of life. While I don't know whether the story is right or wrong, it has a lot of meaning to our lives and this meaning of how to really work on it and what will happen to those who are vulnerable like the children and the elderly will be taken care of by Shobna and how to deal with the circumstances will be done by Sangita. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, ma'am, for your invaluable insight. And I think before taking the questions, we can take it at the end of this discussion. Next, I would like to request Dr. Shobna to kindly deliver her discussion. Ma'am. Thank you, Smita and thank you, Dr. Anita, for giving a beautiful context to this discussion. Now, the task that I have is to talk on mental health issues of children, students and women in the context of the pandemic. So Dr. Anita has beautifully explained what is mental health. So basically what it is, it is a state of well-being where one can realize one's abilities and cope with day-to-day stresses, work productively, contribute to the community. And we also learned that it determines our ability to think, express our emotions, socialize, be productive and enjoy living. So this we know is mental health. So what contributes to poor mental health? Frequent changes, traumatic, painful experiences, sudden and unexpected changes, stressful living, poor working conditions. When you have very poor social and familial environment, etc., and when you have unhealthy lifestyle, these can contribute to poor mental health. So if you look at it, COVID-19 pandemic is one such unexpected change that has happened in our life and it has a potential to leave a long-lasting impact in our lives. So today we would talk about COVID and the way it has affected our lives. So if you see, how has a society or how has the government responded to this pandemic? I'm talking about this because many of this is connected to the mental health concerns that has been already put forward and many of the concerns that we'd be discussing henceforth. There have been lockdowns and so families are put up in their homes. People are not able to leave their homes and carry out their day-to-day tasks that they are familiar with. There are containment zones. You cannot visit people. You're isolated at home or in the hospital. Then you have offices either shut down or working in half strength. As of today, businesses are shut down. So Dr. Anita had mentioned about economic impact. Then the main thing that has happened also is closure of schools and then you have online classes. Exams are online. There is a confusion whether it has to be offline. Then there are rescheduling of classes, cancellation of classes. Then you have of course social distancing, other protocols. This prevents people from carrying out their day-to-day work. So what has been the general impact? Some of this has already been covered. We talked about social isolation, the main aspect being loss of loved ones. We have seen unprecedented tragedy during these past few months. There's a lot of fear and anxiety. What we need to also understand is it has impacted and divided the society and widened the social inequalities all the more. There is difficulty to accept access to healthcare and there is difficulty to avail the treatment facilities, which is what I'm talking about is for other chronic illnesses. This also has created a lot of tension and stress and unwanted unwarranted situations. There's been a lot of displacement. People are isolated. They're not able to travel back and forth. So there is a new normal now of unprecedented social, emotional and economic realities. There's a lot of uncertainty and insecurity. So this is a context that we're going to today discuss on the children, students and women. So I'm going to talk about how has this impacted children, students and women and what are some of the concerns with regard to mental health. Let me start with some of the mental health issues of children. When you talk about children, the first question is who's a child? Here in my presentation, I'm going to go with children who are below the age of 18. So if you look at it, different regulations, acts have different definition of a child, but the most accepted definition is that those who have not completed 18 years of age. So let us also look at before delving into this, let us see the context in which these children live. Children do not always live with their families. So you have some children with their families, then children living in the street, children living in institutions, then you have children with special conditions or children with physical and mental health issues. Very quickly to talk about mental health problems in children. If you look at what psychiatry says, there are children with intellectual disabilities. These are the common mental health disorders or mental health. I don't want to call them disorders, mental health problems that are seen in children. Intellectual disability, then you have children with attention and deficit and hyperactivity, children with other specific conditions like autism, spectrum disorders, learning disabilities, behavior problems, etc. What about COVID, mental health issues during this COVID period? Some of this has already been covered. You see what children also go through these issues of sleep disturbances, changes in appetite. So either they sleep more, they sleep less, they eat more, they do not eat at all. Then they have fear of getting infected. There is severe anxiety and depression and grief, which is what we are seeing these days, grief and post-traumatic stress disorders because of losing loved ones and then being constantly exposed to negative coverage of negative information, negative news that they keep getting. Many children are also indulging in self-harm and suicidal behaviors. The other concern that has really come up now is excessive use of mobile and video games. This is something that probably post-pandemic we may have to deal with and it probably will be one of the most challenging mental health issues for the mental health professionals. Now, most of all, what has happened here is children are deprived of play. I am speaking specifically about smaller children and play is important for all of us. Play is important because it also fosters all-round development, your cognitive development, social development, physical development, etc. Now, the children born during this time or growing up during this time are deprived of play. This is one of the major concerns that we have. Let us look at some of the context of these children and then see what kind of issues they do face. If you see, most of the children are not indulging in play. They are deprived of their friends. That affects the socialization, which is very important especially for toddlers and very young children. Now, what about adolescence? You know that adolescence is such a traumatic time sometimes for families as well as the teenagers themselves. Increased face time with family members can also bring in a lot of stress among the adolescents. And then having all the members in the house, if there has been conflicts or poor interpersonal relationship earlier, this can increase tensions at home and then thus it can contribute to poor well-being among children. As I said, increased screen time. And then the other concern that we are having now is many of the children have been orphaned because they have lost their very close family members especially. They've lost their parents and siblings, etc. And then now they have to live with somebody else or some of them have to live with the state now. So, their dislocation, the trauma, there's a lot of emotional issues related to this that we have seen among children. And what is also seen is behaviour problems has also increased among children. And parents find it very difficult to control them and you must have seen a lot of these jokes going around saying parents are waiting to leave schools to reopen so that they can just literally send the children to school and then have some time off. And he said, the other thing that has been seen is because there is no physical activity, obesity is increasing, that can again lead to emotional problems. What about children in streets? The children in streets, they are highly vulnerable to abuse and then they're also unsupervised, they're homeless basically. And they are under risk for being locked up because they do not follow COVID restrictions. And there is a heightened sense of insecurity because there is no access to food, water or work. So, their existing mental health issues can again be accentuated and they can develop mental health issues also. Now, as far as children in the institutions are concerned, again, the isolation continues, there are restricted movements, so there's more boredom. They've seen that in some places they found that they indulge in violent behaviors and they are vulnerable to institutional abuse and violence which has mental health consequences. And then again, sense of loneliness, insecurity, and there is a lack of trust. These are some of the mental health issues related to children in institutions. Now, if you look at children who have pre-existing mental health issues, as discussed earlier, they have the access to medication and mental health services is poor in certain places. So, we find relapses, we find exacerbation of symptoms. Again, there is high degree of negligence of these children. And again, they also indulge in risk behaviors like, you know, flouting lockdown restrictions and because of their illness, etc., they could have wandering. Some of them can have wandering tendencies that can again put them in high risk of getting infected. Now, the differently abled children, the children with physical disabilities and other disabilities, there is high anxiety and fear because many of them, especially those with physical disability, they are not able to follow the safety protocol because they need to depend on others to provide them with basic care. So, the anxiety and fear among them is also seen to be higher. And again, as it is, they are marginalized. There is increased mobility and decreased socialization, which has enhanced right now during this pandemic, which further isolates them and creates a sense of insecurity. So, how do we recognize these, you know, when these children are in distress? So, let's look at infants, toddlers and preschoolers at one hand and older children and adolescents on the other hand. You see the infants, toddlers and preschoolers among them. If you see, there is increased irritability. There is a lot of emotional change. Some of them cry easily and it's very difficult to calm them down. And again, disturbed sleep, they have fitful sleep and nightmares. They become more clingy and withdrawn. I'm not saying all of them have to, but these are some of the symptoms of distress. And throwing tented tantrums if they've never done that before. And now you see them, you know, not wanting to play or engage in other recreational activities, beg-wetting. And you can see new fears coming now, new types of fears, and then some children being engaging in very aggressive play, which again, which would mean that this is a change from their normal activities and behaviors. In the older children and adolescents also, we tend to see changes in the mood. You know, some are irritable. There is anger. They get into conflicts very often and they express hopelessness, sadness. There is a change in sleep pattern as well as their appetite. And you, some of them, you can see that there is a loss of interest in activity that were previously pleasurable. There is increased consuming of drugs, etc., you know, indulging in or engaging in just taking behaviors. And many of them also show withdrawn or aggressive behaviors. Change in personal hygiene, expressing suicidal thoughts or, you know, when attempting, we know that these are symptoms of stress or distress. So what can we do to help children? So this is just to, this is to appeal to those of you who are, who may have children here. I know that this is a mixed group. So if you have children or your own children or children in your house, just do three things, listen to them, encourage them to share their feelings, ask questions, just be, just, just lend them and lend them your ears. Comfort them. Use simple languages to explain about what is going on, talk to them, tell them stories, sing songs, play games with them, praise them, compliment them and show them that you're there and they can, they can always turn to you if they have any issues, they can come and talk to you and reassure them. They need reassurance, talk to them about how to remain safe, who to contact, you know, when there is any difficulty, what do you have to do, whom do you have to contact, prepare them and make sure when you're doing all these, you should take care of yourself too. So listen, comfort and reassure. These are three simple things that we need to follow. Okay. Now, what, what about the students? What are the mental health issues of students? Now, when we talk about students, remember, there are three different categories of students. You have preschoolers or, you know, those who are doing take care and in their, what do you say, pre KG, etc. And you have school going students and college going students. How has COVID impacted education? Because schools are closed. Now, we have more of digital classes. And there's a confusion about exams. Now, how do we give the exams? We will give online exams to other, it's going to be offline exams. Now, there is also pattern. There is a change in the number of hours that children are engaged. It's not like some most of these smaller children are engaged in fewer hours of classes. They have more free time. Because of this offline classes or because of online classes, there is a lack of supervision, you know, closer classroom supervision that can affect the child's progress itself when there is little bit of, I mean, there is a little supervision. And especially in the rural areas, we see they do not have, there is so much of digital divide. So, and there is poor internet connect, net connectivity, etc. So you find the students actually dropping out. And it really shows a skewed access to education has now come where you have urban versus rural, the urban students having much more opportunities than the rural students and the rich having the access to classes by the poor is struggling. And you must have seen that several children who have actually committed suicide or attempted suicide because they are not able to attend classes, they just don't have the equipments to attend classes. Now, what are the other mental health concerns? Just a minute, I just, yeah. So if you look at this, the mental health concern of these students, you see irritability, mood swings are very common and emotional eating, that's one thing that has been reported from various places. They become sad or angry, upset when they tend to cope with it by eating more. There's a lot of excess time, there is excess free time. So there is a lot of rumination and anxiety about future, what's going to happen, especially those who would have passed out last year and they would have had bank loans, etc. So there's a lot loss of opportunities. They have economic burden on them. How do they pay back the loans? There's a very unsettled feeling. And what is also seen is because of increased screen time, boredom, etc. Especially among the schooling, schoolgoing children and preschoolers, there is behavioral and emotional problems and acting out behaviors. There is lack of motivation to do anything. And as I said earlier, addictions, we are seeing more and more children reporting addiction, especially internet, social media, video game, etc. And then because they have access to these internet and there is lack of supervision now, we see a lot of adolescents, especially indulging in gambling and watching pornography, etc. And then we also have existing mental disorders being, relaxes of mental disorders, which are mainly stress induced. So what can you as students do? Try and stay positive. Remember these decisions related to exams, related to the school, etc. It's not in our hands. So we need to accept this situation and try to make the best out of it by using our time productively. So we enhance skills and knowledge. There are several online, free online classes that you can take short term classes that can enhance your skill. For those of you are interested, get into course era. That is one place where you get different exposure to different short term courses that is offered by well known universities. You can do it at your own pace. Have digital get-togethers with your friends. It's important now to fix your, fix a time to sleep. Make sure that sleep is not compromised and learn to be comfortable with uncertain routine. It's all right. Don't plan too many things which you cannot complete and then it can lead to disappointment. I'm not going on too much into it because Dr. Sangita would be talking about how to cope with the situations. Now quickly coming on to the mental health issues of women. Again, you see we'll have to look at, when you look at women, we need to look at their vulnerabilities. What are they? Why are we discussing about women because they are culturally and socially, they are in a very vulnerable situation because many of our women have less access to educational and educational support, financial support, digital resources and social support. There is so much of emphasis on dual roles, what culture and customs etc. Most women do not have the power to make decisions. There's a lot of discrimination and a lot of different forms of violence that are committed towards women and then you have women who are working, mothers who have to find a harmony between their work and family, women who are lactating, pregnant women and women who are homeless. So here I am going to not go to specific categories or contexts of women, but how has the pandemic impacted them? Dr. Anita had said about frontline workers. Most of the frontline workers are women, so they are at high risk of infection and because their pregnancy etc. again, they need to keep going to the doctors and again they need to travel around to get their shots etc. Then it makes them much more vulnerable for infection. Now what has happened is you have everybody in the house and so there is increased workload. Most of the times it's the women in the household who are burdened with the work. So before when the children go out to school, if it's a homemaker, she has the time to organize herself and try to take some time for herself. This is no more the case. There is constant demand, constant care giving demand that is on her. So what has also happened is many of them have lost their employment and those women who are homemakers too, they've lost their support system. You can see the women's space in the society is diminishing. The space for themselves is diminishing. They're not able to connect with their support system. Then they're losing out their jobs and that is making them much more vulnerable. Then we have what's called the COVID widows. They are those who have lost their spouses and they just don't know where to turn to. Many of the women who were dependent on their former husbands are not there anymore because either the husbands have lost their jobs or they are no more. So that places them again in a vulnerable situation. Vaccination hesitancy is also something which we see among the women because there are these false beliefs that it affects their fertility etc. And they do not have the decision making capacity especially in certain states of our country. So that makes them much more vulnerable. What about the emotional and psychological issues? As said earlier, depression, anxiety, the men are much more vulnerable to depression than men. Anxiety, sense of alienation is something that many women go through. Post-traumatic stress disorder, as I said, losing loved ones, that is again a big issue for women. Suicidal attempts, women show more of somatic symptoms, lot of physical symptoms, which is because of emotional issues. And again, women are also on these days getting more into social media etc. That is probably another form of addiction that we are going to see among women. So how do you deal with this as women? What can you do? And especially the first point is to all of you who have women members in your family, lend them a hand, give them some time off, help them by sharing the family chores, let them help them to set some time aside. For women, keep in touch with your support system, call up, make sure that you take some time for yourself, get your the adults in the house or endless children who can support you for this. Do exercises, fix some time for sleep and reach out to agencies and professionals that can help you to deal with abuse, violence, or any kind of emotional issues. So let's not forget that COVID-19 pandemic has also given us opportunity to bond and connect like never before. What I see is there are family members who are able to bond more, they're able to spend time with each other, express their concern for each other. So not everything about COVID is, let's look at the bright side of it also. So what I'm going to do to you before I finish, I'm going to try and encourage you to take this 30-day mental health challenge. So what you could do is make a to-do list. You know, list out something new you want to do and you've always wanted to do it, you've not done it yet, make a list of it, pick one of these activities and add them every day. That is every day one new activity, add them to your daily routine. For example, say today, delete 10 unwanted files from your computer, maybe another day, say read a chapter from the book, etc. And then at the end of 30 days, reflect, review, see how you have done, what you have got done and how you felt doing it. So I've just made a table of 30 days and probably this is how it could look like. You can do this yourself. Like for example, say day one, you catch up with a friend, maybe day seven, watch a funny video, enrol for new games and do street photography, do some bird watching. You can add one particular one new activity to your daily life and maybe on the 30th day you can jump up and down when you reach a goal. So thank you all for your kind listening and giving me this opportunity to speak. Thank you so much ma'am. Thank you for your enlightened discussion and also some practical measures as to how to deal with our emotional turmoil that we go through. Now I would like to request Dr. Sangeeta Goswami to start with her discussion and then we will go on to the question and answer session. Thank you. So a very good afternoon to all of you and thank you very much for inviting me to this wonderful interactive webinar on pandemic and mental health issues. Thank you Professor Das, Vice Chancellor of KK Handtich State Open University, a very dynamic person and with a person with vision and who has encouraged us, all of us to go ahead and do a lot of work during this COVID times to reach out to students and to the general population. Thank you Dr. Anita and Dr. Shavanna for putting the context for me. It makes it much easier for me to do my work. Big thank you to the School of Social Science and School of Humanities. Right, my English is a little bit difficult, if it is yes, one in a high five will be good out here, so that will be good, that will be good. And if somebody doesn't understand, if somebody wants English, we'll try to put it in between, so it will be a mix of Akhomiya and Ingrasi here. Okay, so if most of you can, let us forget about everything that we have just talked about right now. Focus on yourself, right. And as I put my hand out, you breathe in, as I put my hand in, you breathe out. Okay, let's do it two to three times. Okay, start. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Now, what I want you to do, what do you have to do here? You have to do the video, I'll turn on the video, I'll show you what I have to do here. I'm going to do a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit, yes. So I think we are all alert now, yes. Okay, Okay, more discussion to you, because Dr. Anita and Dr. Sabhana has helped me to let you know about what is happening during the COVID times, mental health. You are eating breakfast. Your daughter knocks over Ma'am, I think our reaction to the situation we are responsible for. Yes, so obviously the answer is, as you said, C is the correct answer. You have got no control over what happened. What happened? How do we react to this? That is in our control. What happened determines how you have reacted. So 10% of your life is made up of what happens to you. 90% of your life is decided by how you react. So this is what is called the 90-dent principle. If I take a second with me, a moment with me, I can change my decision. So I am not a coping mechanism. I am not a coping mechanism. I am a coping mechanism. I am a coping mechanism. If I take a second, I can change my decision. See how I am differentiated by my choice. In this, I am able to change my coping mechanism. So, I am not a coping mechanism. In the sense of a coping mechanism, anyone can become angry. angry, with the right person to the right degree at the right time for the right purposes in the right way. That is not easy. I don't think any of us will be able to say yes to this, that I am practicing it very, very difficult, but then to remember that come to a kind of emotion I am not able to get up. If I get up, I get an emotion, I get angry. If I want to go out, I want to practice more. If I want to practice more, I can practice more. And if I tell you, whatever our emotions are, whatever it is, I will face it. And what I will be able to show you in the form of COVID-19 is that there is no stress in our lives. Especially, the stress of our COVID-19 stress is very high. I feel that because of these types of things, there is no stress at all. Here are the ambiguos, that I am not able to explain in such a way. When I was in Mumbai, I was not able to explain what COVID-19 is, what the virus is, what it is, so it is open to different interpretations. Novel and new, it is very difficult for us to understand. And the third one, it is extremely unpredictable. It is very unclear as to what is going to happen. I feel that this is the third wave, what will happen, what will happen, what will happen. So, these three things are very pleasant to me. If I tell you, my stress has increased. Another thing that is common is that the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health, if you look at it, there is a lot of stress, anxiety, depression, also it has increased. Those symptoms have increased. I feel that the anticipated anxiety for all has also increased. for all has also increased. And I also want to mention that I'm not going to be a part of the Kabak in my morning. And I'm not going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. I'm not going to be a part of Nizawgharat. I am not going to be a part of the Kabak because I'm from the Sinaki, Bandu, family members, extended family, I'm not going to be a part of the Kabak. That's why I'm going to be in a critical stage. So grief is what I call, I call it a fear or a grief. The bottom circle is that it's not my life, it's my grief. That is the grief. So I feel very much that I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. And I feel very much that I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. Because we are inside, time does not always heal. Sometime what happens is also that we work around the grief. The grief that we are stuck into, we are able to survive and not only survive, sometimes we also thrive. So I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. I'm going to be a part of the Nizawgharat. And this resilience is what makes us very human beings. If you can see this slide from the side, you can see the checklist that I've given you. This is the Nizawgharat. Otherwise, you can see it. You can see it in your village, you can see it in your village, you can see it in your student, you can see it in your family, you can see it in your mind. So once that's done, you can see the symptoms of your symptoms. Whenever you see symptoms, you can definitely ask them or refer them to bone, meat, mentally health specialists. Those who are not bringing in daily life, they can't be at home. Whether they have to wake up at night or if they can't get up in the morning, or you have to have an appetite to get better, or you have to have less appetite, or you have to have less tension, worry, and that is the basic symptom. That is why we need to keep this observation in mind. But I would like to show you something that I can show you very basic. Because I am always looking for something that I can show you. If I find something that I am more observant to, So, it is important to just minimize and just put in the checklist just to understand that am I doing okay. So, I feel in control of my feelings. That feeling in control also. So, it is important to just minimize and just put in the checklist just to understand that am I doing okay. So, it is important to acknowledge that yes, I am going through this. Being able to form positive relationship, the relationship need not be only with the male and the female, but the positive relationship, any relationship which gives you the support. When you have emotional support to develop, feeling good about your own self. Knowing how to look after my own self. So, that is why it is important to say that asking for help is not a sign of weakness. So, if you have any stress level, you need to know your limit. So, I am not able to take care of myself. We provide a confidential safe place for you to share. And this is something that is so important for you to take up and for me to take up also and we do so. And I reach out to somebody else for help, it is a sign of self compassion. So, how do you all know me? I am a technical committee. I think about all of you. I think about all of you. So, I think about all of you. First of all, I think about what I am worried about. Then you ask, can I do something about it? If I am worried, I let go of it. If I am worried, I think about the action plan. What action plan do I think about? What do I do? What do I do? What, when, how? So, you can schedule it. When you schedule it, you can think about it. So, after, later on, when you schedule it, you can think about it. So, when you do it, you can think about time management. So, it may be important, but not urgent. I will plan it out because it is important, but not urgent. So, the difference between what I am worried about and what I am worried about. So, I will tell you about this. I know a lot of things. But I don't know much about it. I don't know much about it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Just do it. So, this procrastination also needs to be avoided in this manner. The next thing is that during this COVID times, these are some of the elements that you can think about. To be connected, to be active, to keep learning, to observe, to take notice and to give. I will tell you one of the most important things to do is to talk about looking after oneself. To give quality time to yourself and how you do it is through this word called self-compassion. So, self-compassion means that you are accepting yourself as you are with your strengths and weaknesses and you are trying to overcome any negative thoughts and feelings with the help of your strengths. It is called self-kindness. So, this self-compassion is very important to us. And if it is too much, I will go to some of the points. Now, you will have to put on a routine. But people who are speaking now, you will have to put on a flexible routine. So, if you have a list of things that I will be working on today, I will be able to do it in 10 or 12 or I will be able to do it in this way. Of course, detail yourself. So, for those of you who have been working on this for a long time, you have been given a chart, Dr. Shobana said that you have been given a trist challenge. So, I have increased my activity day by day. This is something I will not be able to understand. I am not able to do anything. I am not able to do anything. I am very happy to be able to do this. I am very happy to be able to do this. I am very happy to be able to do this. But I will not be able to do anything. I will not be able to do anything. I will be able to do this. And quality sleep is equally important. So, what is the difference between YouTube and video? I have not experienced it. I have not experienced it. But if you are not able to do anything, you can do whatever you want to do. To explore creativity. I mean to Facebook, YouTube, creativity. And this is one of the beautiful ways to express your energy positively. So, if you are looking for a doodling, if you are searching for a doodling, the very important thing to understand is your brain activity. If you think about the body, the world will know about you. If you think about the body, the world will know about you. A little bit of exercise. On my right is my foot. So, then to stay connected. So, it is to give that time to yourself and also to check who you are talking to and how much time you are using on your social. And also if you are new, I am not able to read the newspaper because I am not good at it. So, I am able to read the news because I am good at it. Then to identify your worries, I will give you this technique to solve your worries. You can do that. And it is very common to have a lot of discussion. If you are not good at it, then you have to find a way to live. It is more like if you give more, you are able to heal more. Then to whenever we are little tense, we can visualize, I will do a visualized exercise. And I am good at it. I am very good at it. I am very good at it. And if something happens, I am very good at it. So, to practice gratitude and gratefulness becomes very important. And it is very different. And I feel that I have to smile. Because when you smile, you cannot frown. We are giving the positive energy to somebody else. So, let me do one more small exercise with you. This is something called mindfulness practice. Just imagine that if we are panicking, if we are feeling panicked, if we are feeling panicked, if we are feeling panicked, if we are feeling panicked, we can breathe in and breathe out. If you feel panicked, then you can imagine that if you feel panicked, if you feel panicked, then you can imagine that if you feel panicked, And you blow the candle. So let's do it once more, breathe in, right? So subject to a constant stream of positive and negative thoughts and emotions, what distinguishes us as human beings is the capable of positive change and it is true. So I will end with something to a few slides which I always enjoy sharing. So this is your 50 points to positivity on the lighter note which I want to end this, pursue achievable goals. It is our photo-conciler and enjoy your screen. Yes, look at that. Keep smiling, share with others, help out your friends and maintain a youthful spirit. Get along with everyone, keep cool under pressure. I will forgive others when they are annoying. Have a good friends, cooperate and read for greater rewards, cherish some beautiful moments and have confidence in yourself, respect yourself, calculate the risk of life and of course lastly don't forget to relax. Thank you so much ma'am for your practical solutions on how to deal with our mental health issues and also great practical measures and ma'am now I would like to take a few of the questions. The first question was actually in Assamese, it was given by Mr. Deepjute Kalitha. He had said that the pandemic makes the employment process too slow and the youth lose their valuable time in that process so it has given rise to a lot of anxiety and depression among the youth. So how to overcome this situation regarding basically talking about unemployment and employment slump that we are going through at the present time. Dr. Anita will answer that, is it? Yeah, I will answer it. Yes. Yes, there is a whole lot of disturbance that has happened due to economic activity and it is understandable that people are likely to go into depression and anxiety. On the other side, yes, there are jobs that are available also have come down and so it is just to some extent a normal reaction that people will face and a lot of people probably will come out of it once they get their jobs. If the symptoms continue even after they get their jobs then it would possibly mean that they would have a clinical depression or a clinical anxiety. Having said that, if you have mental health issues when you are searching for your jobs, it would make your ability to find a job more complex and so in this context it would be advisable that people seek help or work with a strong social support network that they are having because many of the people may say that I don't have money but how can I seek services? Yes, that is a challenge and there might be people who would be willing to work on a sliding scale at this time because many of the counselors know that people are in difficulties and would bring down their costs too. If even that is not possible and you are not able to really seek help because you are financially really disturbed, then you possibly can go back to the YouTube and you will find a lot of relaxation YouTube videos that are available which you can really access and use them. The other thing is also that there are government helplines which are there where you can reach out for mental health services and these are free of cost like say for example an immense helpline is free of cost then there is for children there is a helpline 1098 which is there, 1012 is there for women's issues and there is also a child and adolescent mental health plan. I don't remember the number but that's also there. So you see that there are in case you cannot get services there are free services and remember that not attending to your mental health problems means that getting into a more difficult circumstance of finding jobs. It's also a period that government is promoting social enterprises and today I was just listening to a video which was done by a construction worker. He has opened a YouTube channel, he's seven standard educated, a construction worker and he's opened a YouTube channel which has some 27 lakhs of followers and what does he do? He is putting up information on his everyday life. So now for people who don't know tribal lifestyle this is a channel which you can engage with. I think that what I'm trying to say is that there are creative ways of finding ways of building up your skill sets. There are ways in trying to find out new opportunities that are coming in the sector. There are new enterprise there are government trainings that are happening specially for enterprise kindly join them and these are a lot of it is women's center. There might be job trainings which are happening which are for both the genders and might be at a little price but try to skill yourself and equip yourself so that when the market opens you have opportunities to get into jobs. The other thing is that there is no in the sense if don't get to the pitch that I have to get the highest salary because when you get to the highest salary that's a message you have to give that your salaries can be stabilized but if you're getting an employment suggest for people that they enter the job market rather than being unemployed because unemployed or voluntary unemployed is much more difficult to deal with rather than a salary high-catalator point and it's understandable that people have gone into a little difficult circumstance and have reduced their job their salaries so I think and or even if you can't get any of these engage in a voluntary work with a startup or something like that so that your career path is filled in by some voluntary work with an organization does work very close to what you're doing have I answered your yes ma'am I think so and now actually a person Nausha Dali he has been messaging and asking about that his wife is dealing with symptoms of depression she is not able to eat or sleep and he's saying that there is no such issues at home they have a three-year-old doctor and but the wife is not you know doesn't seem to be able to smile or be happy in anything whatever you know they are doing as family members and she he said that her sleep time is fine but she is not able to you know lead a normal life and is not behaving in a you know as though her mental health is in a normal situation so he had also given that some medicines were prescribed to her when they visited the psychiatrist but that has been of no health so what would you suggest in such a case any of the speakers can answer to that if if she has been I don't know how long she has been unwell and if she has been given the medication I mean she has been prescribed medication recently then you need to wait for a while because usually for the medicines to take effect it takes a little while at least you know three weeks and then usually if it if it is depression then around three to six months she should be fine with the medication now it's important that if she is able to do some work she needs to be engaged in some you know work or the other whatever she is able to do so the question is in terms of why is she not getting well is it that is the crux of the question so if if even after taking the medicines for a long time she's not getting well it is important that she gets back to the psychiatrist and go for a follow-up and look at the reasons why she is probably the if the psychiatrist will look at the you know try to treat the medicines which he requires if he more of medication they will do that that needs to be done he has written that the medicine that the psychiatrist has prescribed is showing her sleepiness I mean her sleepiness has come up and she is with drowsy most of the time and that is why he is more worried now he has given something point two five I think he is talking about we will not comment on the medicines because none of us here are medically trained okay so we will not comment on the medicines person but what we would like to say is if she has drowsiness if she is you know sleeping most of the day and all that so they have to go back he has to go back to the doctor and let them know but that that is important sometimes some medicines can have some side effects so that needs to be taken care of so that needs to be done and if if she is on regular med with regular medication and engaging in you know activities of certain activities that are meaningful she should do fine Thank you ma'am. I'll take just one more question actually clubbing two person's question into one. A person has written that lockdown and stay at home has brought about a lot of restlessness and anxiety among the people that already the are respected speakers have discussed so she is asking what can we do about it and basically the question about children showing disobedient behavior or as you said hyperactive behavior. So maybe so then she's asking what can be done about that children who are having or you know showing kind of not listening to the parents are showing disobedient behavior basically not trying to control them at home. Anybody would like to answer or do you want me to answer. Yeah. Okay. You may just add on to that. I think I'm about how people are getting depressed because of the long time staying at home. I remember now. So long time ago, we had already self-compassion, we had already talked about self-compassion. Slight comment. We definitely can do self-compassion. And the other thing is that we can exercise and be connected. And we can do this too. You are passing through the shelf. There is no such thing as being alone. And sometimes we feel that we don't have any control. If we don't have any control, I will do it. And if we don't have any control, we will see that our mental state will be fine. So this will help you to enhance your mental state. And of course, my life will be happy. Thank you. We'll take just one more question. Yeah, I want to respond to the civil disobedience question. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was by, yeah. Yes, ma'am, you can talk. Somebody has asked about the civil disobedience. See, as of now, if you look at across the world, there has not been civil disobedience increasing in any of the countries other than Myanmar. One of the reasons why civil disobedience comes in is primarily when inequalities are there. COVID has been actually affected everyone equally. It did not discriminate between people. And the unfairness that happened will happen to everybody, whether he was rich, poor, middle-class, educated, not educated. Possibly that is the reason why people have been able to hold on and work on it. And they also probably know that civil disobedience at this point may not really work out. Of course, yes, there are farmers agitation that happened. And that started before COVID really came into picture. So it is not directly linked to COVID, but independent of COVID. So as of now, we have no indication to say that civil disobedience will increase in the world because of COVID-19. We don't know two years down the line when people don't get jobs, don't have money, what will happen. But I can only speak about at this point of time. Thank you, ma'am. One person had commented on the inequality of opportunity of children who do not have access to virtual education. So because of network issues or because they do not own a smartphone, they are not having access to virtual education. So he just wants to know your opinion on that about children who do not have access to virtual education. That would be our last question here. It is very unfair if any child is not able to get education because they don't have access to technology. And I think that a lot of NGOs and people are trying to bridge this gap. The simple way to bridge this gap is to mobilize unused mobiles and hand it over the children who are in need of them. Because I think if you look at all of us, we probably have at least one mobile which we are not using and it is a smartphone. I think that strategy would work. The other strategy that could work is I was reading another story of a young girl. She is an eight standard educated girl. And during the COVID times, she has started taking classes for the younger children in her village, in her hamlet. It's a tribal or a rural hamlet. I don't remember. So she has started doing rather than I think there are solutions that you can locally find. And it's that we need to motivate as social workers. I think we need to motivate communities to find local solutions to a lot of the problem. And those local solutions probably can go a long way when resources are a crunch. I think there are some states that also have these learning centers. They are planning at least. I know states like Kerala, etc. They have these learning centers where children can come. So as Anita was saying, it's important that each of us as people who are in a way luckier than others in terms of not really have to worry about putting food on the table. If we have extra time in our hands, it's important that we do something where we go out and of course with all these restrictions, it is possible to reach out to these children if you have children in your neighborhood whom you can take care of, taking care of all this COVID protocol that that would be something that we could do. Psychiatry, I mean social work students can think of this as one of their fieldwork exercises to do. That is one thing that can be done. Just to add to the point of how do we manage children at home? It's important when we sit with the child and try and understand what interests the child and then engage in those activities and parents have to actually now keep their take some time out and spend with the children. There are several lovely books that have come out. I think one is called, I think UNICEF has one which is called My Hero. I can send it across to you and then maybe you can. So these are the small, it talks about COVID and that it gives a beautiful message to children on COVID and how every one of us is a hero. All of us can read it. So these kind of interesting books are available. Keep them engaged in those activities. Have activities which are also fun and that contribute to their cognitive development. Playing scrabbles, playing such games which can increase their cognitive development as well as have some fun. So that is important that that could probably also help and don't keep telling them to don't keep imposing a lot of rules but have flexible rules. There has to be a structure that the child can follow. Thank you ma'am. So I thank all the speakers here. Thank you Anita ma'am for giving us an insight into the issues of mental health and Shobna ma'am for all the understanding of issues with women during the pandemic. Listening to you has always been a privilege for me since my master's days and Sangeeta ma'am for all your practical advices and strategies to deal with our issues. Now I would like to invite Professor Joydeep Borwa to give the concluding remarks. Thank you so much. Thank you Madrasmita. And then this is a lovely session and that long session actually almost 515. So we are here for the modern two hours and our participants are also here. Still we have 150 plus. So the idea is that what I get that these are important issues and there will be a lot of questions and as time will pass the things will also change and issues will also change. So therefore I think it will be important for us to engage with this issue as as we proceed and probably we need to have a monthly counseling session kind of thing where there'll be no straight counseling sessions for different questions. It can be team-based or we can have a pre-registration with questions to get more kind of questions. So I think that these kind of things are important and our university probably will have to think about it because we have all the learners distantly located, remotely located, faced with different constraints. So we will definitely work it out and then we see how we can proceed. We will talk to the authority and then we have to evolve system to give a support in this double time. So that is the idea. So I on behalf of the university and also from my school would like to thank all the eminent speakers, three speakers, Ma'am Onita, Ma'am Subna and Ma'am Sangita for your time and also for your expertise and then it has been a privilege. And I also thank the university authority, our IT team and my colleagues who have supported this whole exercise and most importantly the participants for being here and also trying to put up questions. It's sad that we cannot take more questions because of time because online program itself has certain problems. If you engage more, for the more time it becomes very boring. So that is why I was thinking probably it will be good if we can have monthly kind of sessions, at least one hour if we can devote to answer some of the questions that are on the surface. So with this hope that we will have some things in the future and trying to get support from you as experts in our coming days also. So with these few words, I would like to thank everyone for joining us today and then I declare that this session is closed. So thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.