The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Madurai varsity to provide drama therapy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Nov 28, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Madurai varsity to provide drama therapy

By S. Annamalai

MADURAI, NOV. 27. Madurai Kamaraj University has forwarded to the University Grants Commission a proposal for starting a Centre for Drama Therapy, first of its kind in the country.

The objective is to use drama as an alternative therapy to the needy.

Talking to The Hindu here, the Vice-Chancellor, P. K. Ponnuswamy, said the Rs.50-lakh centre in the School of Performing Arts would provide certificate, diploma and post-graduate courses, besides facilitating research and publication. It would also offer therapeutic education and counselling to children in special schools and inmates of homes for the mentally ill.

Prof. Ponnuswamy said there were about 3,000 children in special schools around Madurai in need of therapeutic education. They would get creative arts therapy, tailor-made.

With an increase in life expectancy, geriatric problems were mounting with more and more aged people getting confined to old-age homes. `Reminiscence therapy' would deal with geriatric problems.

The centre would provide special counselling and therapy, especially to young women, living in Madurai and surrounding villages, where the suicide rate was on the rise. The women would be enabled to manage stress and depression to curb suicidal tendencies.

For social harmony

The divorce rate was also going up with domestic disharmony caused by man-woman discord. A new phenomenon in the region was the predicament of single parents. The centre would address these issues to restore harmony in society.

Prof. Ponnuswamy said the centre could also be used to train school children in drama for self-development and self-actualisation. A distinct advantage was the offer of drama as an alternative therapy in a country with a poor ratio of psychiatrists to the mentally ill. Psychiatric social workers could also be trained in drama therapy here.

The recent application of drama therapy among a group of mentally ill in Madurai proved successful. Besides being cost-effective, the therapy produced remarkable results in the physiological and psychological behaviour of the patients over a given period.

The centre would coordinate with the Department of Psychiatry of the Madurai Medical College, the M. S. Chellamuthu Trust and Research Foundation and the Arangam Trust of danseuse Anita Ratnam.

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