Gandhinagar: Every school teaching Classes 9 to 12 in Gujarat will now have to run a structured mental health system, and the state has written the shape of it into regulation.
The provisions, brought under the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Regulations, 1974, apply to schools affiliated to the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board. A government release on Sunday said the aim is to make students' mental well-being count for as much as their marks, pointing to examination pressure, competition, social media use, family expectations and anxiety about the future.
At the centre is a School Wellness Team, to be set up at the start of each academic year and reviewed annually. The principal heads it, a counsellor or designated teacher coordinates it, and it includes one teacher each from the secondary and higher secondary sections, a School Management Committee member, a non-teaching staff member and two student peer leaders called Mano-Mitra.
Schools with 100 or more students must appoint at least one qualified counsellor, psychologist or social worker trained in child and adolescent mental health. Smaller schools must set up formal referral arrangements with external professionals, nearby community and primary health centres, the District Mental Health Programme and Tele-MANAS.
The state has adopted the UMMEED guidelines developed by NCERT — Understand, Motivate, Manage, Empathise, Empower and Develop — as its reference framework, and says the regulations were framed in line with Supreme Court directions on student mental health and suicide prevention.
The rules also reach into classroom practice. Schools cannot segregate students on the basis of marks, publicly humiliate them or compare them in ways that cause distress. They must provide extra mentoring around board examinations, results and the transitions from Class 8 to 9 and Class 10 to 11, and organise activities such as yoga, meditation, art, music, gardening and sport.
All teaching and non-teaching staff must be trained by certified mental health professionals at least twice a year. Any sign of self-harm or severe distress must be acted on immediately, and a student who has attempted self-harm must never be left alone.
Schools must maintain records of committee meetings, peer activities, sessions and referrals, and submit an implementation checklist to district authorities every month.