Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences

Three hours workshop was conducted at Beconhouse school system on 24-4-2010. The main purpose of the workshop was to give the awareness about the common mental health problems among the school age children and to give them healthy suggestion to deal with the emotional, behavioral, problems of the children.

It was planned to identify the emotional and behavioral problems which are most common in Beconhouse school students and more over to guide parents how they can adapt healthy parenting styles and what role of teachers in the management of issues.

The rationale of the activity was to enhance the mental health of the children and to make them able to live with their full potential and abilities.

Participants

Mothers and teachers were the participants of this workshop. All the participants were divided in to 6 groups and there were 6 members in each group.

After the combine activity following problems of the children were identified by the mothers

• Thumb sucking
• Nail biting
• Aggression
• Bullying
• Shyness/ lack of confidence
• Low self esteem
• Hyperactivity
• Conduct problems
• Peer conflicts
• Lack of concentration in studies
• Lack of motivation towards studies
• Excessive TV watching
• Anxiety during exams
• Problems in socialization
• Conflicts of ICT

After the identification of the problems, facilitators address each of the problems one by one and suggestions were given to the participants regarding the management.

Workshop was ended with the strategy making to counter the negative role of the electronic media and healthy parenting styles and participants were given the healthy take home messages through hand outs.