‘Sukoon’ for inmates: Prison dept launches project for online therapy, counselling

With an aim to provide online counselling and therapy to undertrials aged between 18 and 21 years, the prison department in Haryana launched project ‘Sukoon’ on Tuesday

With an aim to provide online counselling and therapy to undertrials aged between 18 and 21 years, the prison department in Haryana launched project ‘Sukoon’ on Tuesday. Some 106 inmates will be counselled under this project.

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The counsellors will interact with the inmates with an objective to instil hope, and bring a positive change in their behaviour, the officials said.

A pre-assessment study will be conducted, beginning Tuesday, to assess and identify the inmates, who are suffering from mental health issues. This would help the officials to develop a suitable virtual intervention plan for them.

Major mental health issues such as stress, anger management, and depression among others need to be addressed. We aim to do so through this project, said the officials. The Haryana prison department is working on the project in coordination with the India Vision Foundation.

K Selvaraj, director-general (prisons), said that both qualitative and quantitative measures are used to assess the need for mental health intervention. “A certain standardised self-report measures assessing the inmates’ current level of distress, a structure assessment to measure cognitive functioning and a case history intake, and a semi-structured interview on a one-on-one basis with each inmate were conducted on Tuesday,” Selvaraj said.

“During the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, social workers and counsellors have been restricted to visit the prisons. So, we have decided to start an online counselling for the inmates, where the counsellors and psychologists will conduct the sessions through video calling,” said Monica Dhawan, director, India Vision Foundation.