The beginning of the board exam season puts enormous pressure on students. Dr Bhooshan Shukla, a Pune-based child psychiatrist, points out that the appointment ratio of students taking board exams jumps from 10% in other months to 50% during this period, and he even has to book clinic hours for urgent cases. The Indian Express spoke to Dr. Shukla about how parents, teachers and children themselves take better care for children’s mental health.
Q: What should be the role of parents in helping their children’s mental health during board exams?
Dr. Shukla: A lot of this depends on the relationship you have built up to this point.
If you have a relationship where you are your child’s partner in studies, then you already have a plan for how both of you are going to prepare and what the last days before the exams are going to be like.
If your job has primarily been that of, say, supervisor, then that is what you will continue to do. But by supervisor I mean that your child has really listened to you over the last year. So there is a plan that you supervise, and the child has agreed that you will be their supervisor and they actually allow you to do it, and that has happened all year.
The third version, which I believe to be true for almost 80% of families are where parents get involved from time to time and try to motivate their children in one way or another to study, and the children largely ignore their parents or come into conflict with them. If this has been your relationship for the past year, then now is the time to step back and let the child do his thing.
Because you’ve tried your thing for a whole year or 2 years and it hasn’t gone exactly according to your plans. So at least at this moment it is necessary to take a step back.
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Q: What should be the role of teachers, schools and tuition teachers at this time?
Dr. Shukla: To be honest, schools and teachers have been doing the same thing over and over again for years. They are unlikely to follow the advice of a child psychiatrist or any mental health professional. Their typical position is that we have been doing this every year and have come out champions. We know what we are doing.
Tuition teachers never receive alerts. When are schools activated? When one of the children commits suicide, or at least says they are going to end their lives. That’s when everyone suddenly wakes up and starts looking for a mental health expert.
The point is that the stress breaking mechanism or resilience must be built over a period of time. Constantly giving kids threatening messages and telling them they’re going to hell if they don’t behave doesn’t really create that environment.
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So this last month, I think the simple job that teachers and even parents have is pretty similar: encourage kids. Say “Yes, you can do it. Go ahead, you’ll be fine.”
Q: What can students do to keep their mental health safe?
Dr. Shukla: This is advice very contrary to what their teachers and parents are going to tell them. But I give this advice from two points of view: one as a mental health doctor and second, as someone who has consistently achieved excellent grades on these exams.
1. You should sleep 7 to 8 hours every day. The dream is absolutely golden.
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2. You have to have 45 minutes to an hour of exercise. or play every day, even the night before the exam. That is the greatest way to combat stress you can have. You physically sweat and you’re fine.
3. If you like some type of performing art like music, dancing, whatever, you should do it every day. Something that uses totally different circuits in your brain than the ones you use to study.
4. You have to eat less. You don’t have to die yourself but stay away from sugars, stay away from chocolate. Eat multiple but small meals instead of those big, heavy meals twice a day. That keeps you alert.
5. Hydration is very important. People forget to drink water. I may sound like a grandma, but it all comes down to these little things.