COVID-19 Impact: Tripura begins call centre to assist school students to beat depression

Tripura Education Department starts call centre to provide professional assistance to students suffering from depression.

To help students combat depression during their stay at home amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis in the country, the Tripura School Education Department has launched a call centre to provide professional assistance to them. Launching the call centre, Tripura Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath said many parents and guardians are tensed about their children suffering from depression as they are not able to go to school. “We know many parents, guardians are worrying for their children who are depressed, since they are stuck at home, unable to attend schools. We have decided to start a call centre to help them in getting aid with their lessons and to get help in such cases of depression”, the minister said.

While commenting on the initiative, an official of the School Education Directorate said that a dedicated person will always be available on the call centre at 0381-2410053 to route calls to teachers and doctors, psychologists, educational counselors as per the requirement of the caller. The state education department has arranged a panel of 24 doctors who would be available to take calls to answer any query on subjects taught at the schools while four doctors and few educational counselors, educationists would be available for advising children on depression, academic counseling etc.

“This effort is to help students stuck in their homes from spiraling into depression. We feel this is the right decision taken at the right time”, Nath said.

Earlier this year, the state government started an innovative project ‘Ektu Khelo, Ektu Padho’ in the elementary education segment to make sure they didn’t lose interest in studies and were mentally upbeat. The scheme which works through text messaging aims at bringing out hidden talents from students. The Tripura Government has been conducting class lecture sessions on local cable TV channels since the lockdown was announced, to ensure students don't suffer any academic loss. 

Lately, the education department has started online classes on social media and SMS based interactive classes for those who don’t have access to smartphones or Internet connectivity.

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