DIRECTIVES ISSUED by the Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU) to institutes affiliated to it for checking growing cases of depression among students have become a source of concern for college managers.
According to senior professors and directors of these institutes many of the suggestions were “highly impractical” and could not be implemented.
On grounds of anonymity, a senior professor of a technical institute said among the several directives send on May 16 this year, the most important directive was that teachers should ensure that boys and girls did not meet in lonely places or engage in long conversation.
The directive was criticised by students and teachers alike. For them it was not feasible to keep a check on where and when students met on or outside the campus.
According to them, in a co-education institute it was impossible to put any such restriction on students. Besides, they felt that students of professional institutes were mature enough and the least they needed was suggestions or directions about how to carry themselves.
On the other advice that institutes should engage professional psychologists and psychiatrists, the managers of these institutes said it was also a difficult job as most of the engineering institutes did not have sufficient funds to ensure such appointments on regular basis. They, however, said that the services of psychologists and psychiatrists could be requisitioned on part-time basis.
{{/usCountry}}On the other advice that institutes should engage professional psychologists and psychiatrists, the managers of these institutes said it was also a difficult job as most of the engineering institutes did not have sufficient funds to ensure such appointments on regular basis. They, however, said that the services of psychologists and psychiatrists could be requisitioned on part-time basis.
{{/usCountry}}Similarly, they said that the suggestions could prove effective in checking depression among students. The, however, felt that implementing them was not an easy task.
They said to keep a check on students taking medicine without doctors’ advice the support of their friends would be required. “It is friends who can give information if a student was a drug addict or not,” said one of the professors.
Most of the teachers held the opinion that family pressures also contributed to depression among students and it should at that level only. They suggested that family members should burden their wards with ambition.
They should be provided a stress-free environment so that they could concentrate on their studies, they said.