COEP launches month-long wellness programme for students

The College of Engineering Pune (COEP) has started a one month ‘mental health challenge’ for students this month with small activities to keep students stress free and regain happiness through studies

The College of Engineering Pune (COEP) has started a one month ‘mental health challenge’ for students this month with small activities to keep students stress free and regain happiness through studies.

HT Image

Several colleges are already running counselling sessions and mental wellbeing programmes for their students throughout the year.

“From the last one and half years since the pandemic started, we are continuously working on our students for their mental wellbeing, as everyone of us are affected due to Covid and need mental support. Initially, we organised various online programmes and sessions for students, but as they were already overloaded with several online lectures and education series, we stopped that and focused more on group activity building, one to one counselling and mentoring sessions by senior students to new students. In the last one year, more than 1,000 students at COEP have benefited from this wellness programme,” said Kshipra Moghe, centre head of COEP wellness centre.

COEP is one of the foremost engineering colleges in the country that has introduced a dedicated helpline for their students. Besides, the ‘COEP Mitra (friend)’ and ‘ICareWeCare’ initiatives have made a mentorship programme for this year’s new first year students. Around 600 newly admitted students are divided into batch of 20 students each, while each batch has a final year one student as their mentor along with a faculty teacher.

“The new initiative which we have launched is mental health awareness month, which is celebrated in USA, and we are also doing it here for our students. Daily we give small activities or things to do to students which will give joy and a bit of relaxation to them. We all know that situation is worse outside, we are talking about it for a year but now we need to live with this new normal and get going forward. So, our focus was on the mental wellbeing as well as to be productive now in our studies and daily life. We have created a 30-day calendar for students, declared it on social media platforms and told students to share their daily activities,” she added.