Indore : “ Twenty percent of the school children are suffering from various mental disorders in our city.
Students between the age of five and 15 years are mainly suffering from depression, anxiety and insomnia,” said senior psychiatric Dr Abhay Jain.
Addressing the media on Central India Psychiatry Conference- 2014, Dr Jain said “ I surveyed over thousand school children between the age of five and 15 years in 2013 in Indore and Ujjain over their mental health and status. During the study, I have found shocking facts that 20 percent of the children are suffering from some mental diseases.” It is also found that the mental disorder of a child is proportionate to the disorders in his/ her parents and the reason for this is lack of face to face contact, Dr Jain said. As the means of communication increased, person to person communication decreased, he added.
“ I child under the age of 15 is a shadow of his/ her parents. Life and relations between his parents affect his mental health and the child needs no treatment but the parents,” the senior psychiatric said. “ There is a big communication gap between the children and parents. Parents don’t have time for the children due to hectic schedule and a run for imaginary targets.
Moreover, the remaining time is consumed by internet and mobile phones,” he said.
Coming on to the mental illness in general, Dr Abhay Jain said that 40- 50 percent people have the symptoms of mental disorder and about 20 percent of them need immediate treatment.
“ A major hurdle in the treatment of these diseases is that most of the physicians are not aware of such diseases and they started their diagnosis to find out the disease. They should refer the patient to a psychiatric instead of going through various diagnoses without any purpose,” Dr Jain added.
