IITs devise wellness path for students

To promote wellness among its students and help them to become not only as successful engineers but also strong emotional beings, several IITs have come together to brainstorm and introduce innovative programmes for human excellence.
To begin with, a workshop was organised yesterday at IIT Kharagpur on promotion of wellness in IIT campuses wherein perspectives of the IITs were presented by IIT Kharagpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras and IIT Gandhinagar, the last one representing the newer IITs.
Experts from IIT Kharagpur, NIMHANS, TISS Mumbai and several industry experts delved deep into the campus life at the IITs and tried to find a solution.

"Our aim is not to pick their weaknesses but to encourage their innate strengths and then sharpen them further. We should understand that most of the brilliant students in the country get admitted into the IIT system and their problems are very unique," said Prof. Partha Pratim Chakrabarti, Director of IIT Kharagpur.
"We need to relieve them from unnecessary and imaginary stress elements that they suffer from. And that is the reason why we are trying to get a unique solution," Prof. Chakrabarti had said.
IITs have considered programmes such as students' helpline, induction programme, academic curricula update etc. IIT Kharagpur is introducing four programs for its under- graduate students.

While the first year students will have an induction programme helping them to settle with campus life, the second year students will have an assimilation session where they will understand the IIT system better.

Once in third year the students will have reorientation session and finally in third year they will go through a de-induction program to make them ready for life outside campus.
IIT BHU has introduced an induction program as well while IIT Bombay has collaborated with TISS for counseling helpline.
At IIT Kharagpur, the students' councils would now have representation of four categories of students - Woman, PhD, Postgraduate and Undergraduate from every department who will be further represented by a council member from each category.

Further, students counseling wouls also include services like career development and students' activities to make counseling stigma free and encourage students to opt for assistance for conscious health and wellness activities.
IIT Bombay has developed a detailed questionnaire to analyze students' mental health. IIT Madras has developed reactive and proactive programmes called Mitra and Saathi respectively.
The programme has been initiated by Ministry of Human Resources Development to develop a set of recommendations which could promote wellness among students across old and new IITs.
The outcome and recommendations of the workshop would be communicated to MHRD for considering execution at IITs and similar institutions.