The comprehensive wellness programme for the Tamil Nadu police, designed by the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans), Bengaluru, will enhance the mental health and self-esteem of the personnel, the nodal officer for the programme said.
When asked what kind of change he expected to see after imparting the wellness training to the force, Dr. C. Ramasubramanian, the nodal officer for Tamil Nadu for the implementation of the National Mental Health Programme and the National Mental Health Survey, said the mental health and self-esteem of the personnel and their family members would go up substantially. “We hope to see a perceptible change in their attitude, approach and behaviour towards the public. Their quality of work, efficiency and bonding with the organisation will also go up, resulting in better productivity,” he told The Hindu.
Nimhans has designed the programme based on a preliminary study on the behavioural aspects, enhanced stress levels and other ailments plaguing the force.
With the objective of redressing mental/physical stress and improving the stress management skills of police personnel across the State, the programme would initially identify 254 police officials and 104 counsellors from civil society, including those from schools specialising in social work and institutes of psychology. These individuals would be trained as ‘Master Trainers’.
Continuous programme
The 358 trainee Master Trainers/Counsellors would act as a three-member faculty, thereby forming close to 120 groups that would conduct training programmes and meet the family members of the police personnel. The personnel would be trained in batches of 35, including their family members.
According to Dr. Ramasubramanian, the 104 counsellors would be given a ‘Diploma in Counselling’ by Nimhans on successful completion of work as ‘After Trainers’.
“This will be a continuous programme, and new recruits would be included as and when they are inducted into the force after training. The police officials trained as Master Trainers would be implementing the project full-time. The training module was finalised by Nimhans after several rounds of discussion,” he said.
The wellness programme would be monitored by Nimhans experts on a weekly basis through tele-psychiatry (video-conferencing). The focus of the Master Trainers would be on building the skills of the force to mitigate the effects of stress. An exclusive sensitisation programme would be conducted, covering all senior police officers.
