Well Meaning Words Wreaking Havoc in Mental Well-being

As the quote from a popular work of fiction goes, “What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for and to do it so unconsciously.”, our equation with our words and actions is such. We have all been in situations or have seen instances where one is told to not mind the words but the intention and learnt to make peace with it. But what if these well intended words were directed at children, potentially shaping their idea of self worth and self concept?

Manam Foundation in collaboration with the Psychology Department, BJB College organised a Workshop on Wellbeing of Students and Teachers in the Arts Block Auditorium of BJB College on 17 March 2025. As the expert invited to hold the workshop, Dr. Shekhar Sheshadri, Advisor, SAMVAD and Ex-Senior Professor, NIMHANS, Dept. of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry joined the session. While the session saw teachers from premiere schools across the state capital in attendance, the session was also joined by Dr. Jhumki Rath, Principal, BJB College, Dr. Lekha Das, Head, Department of Psychology, BJB College, and Dr. Anuradha Mahapatra, Director, Manam Foundation.

The workshop commenced with Dr. Seshadri’s keynote address in which he deliberated on mental health issues at institutional level. In his deliberation he highlighted the concerns of mental health issues that are faced by the students in colleges and mentioned ways in which our schools and colleges could equip themselves to deal with students’ mental health issues. He highlighted the significant feat that Trinity College, Dublin has achieved in its health care practices and how we must learn and adapt in order to address the sensitive issue of student suicides in the country.

Being in the drafting committee of the POCSO Act of 2012, Dr. Seshadri has had the opportunity of looking at child mental wellbeing from close quarters. Using his experience, Dr. Seshadri also chose to deliberate on a few things about mindful parenting. Among these considerations was his emphasis on culture based parenting with room for discussions and connection over an instruction based parenting. He also mentioned how the act of ‘disciplining’ in relationships like that of a parent-child or teacher-child, always came from a position of hierarchy and held a detrimental impact on such relationships. The esteemed speaker further went on discouraging overinvolvement in the lives of children and emotionally abusive language while encouraging affirmative language and re-establishing adult relationships.

When Dr. Seshadri opened the floor for audience interaction, he asked individuals to enact a few situations, like failing examination, bad-mouthing peers, while he asked audience members to respond to them as their well meaning family or friends. The responses were noted and discussed. When these responses were deliberated upon, they did not seem to be meeting the standards of sensitivity towards the concerned individual. To demonstrate this lack in common empathy that is especially important towards children, Dr. Seshadri showed the audience the wide gap between the intention of an individual and the content they use to communicate it. For instance, an audience member representing a well-meaning friend to someone who has flunked their paper uttered words that would unintentionally demean the abilities of the concerned individual while they intended to console the individual in question.

Similarly, an audience member who was asked to enact the role of a teacher to a child suffering from an emotional breakdown put the entire auditorium wondering. These instances showed us the clear gap between our intentions and their manifestations from the limited understanding of what the esteemed guest speaker referred to as ‘depth of reflection’. He made it clear with this activity that our responses to most situations came from ideals and an urge to respond to them instead of deeply reflecting and empathising with the circumstances.

Dr. Seshadri further went on to demonstrate the difference between a classroom environment that is conducive to interactive learning and one that is didactic in nature. He shared his methods like using a surprise element to begin a class with anticipation, filling a class with ample examples to understand a concept with clarity, branding the topic so as to understand what the students thought of it, inviting students to dramatise the topic to make it fun and interactive, and processing and meta-processing the learnings to enhance classroom education. The workshop, later made use of audience members to show the workings of a heterogeneous group discussion and how to moderate it while taking the diversity and the contributions of each of the group members into consideration.

The session was a resounding success except for the fact that this success did not carry with itself the usual joy of successes but a very evident weight of the lack of awareness of common empathy and the constraints the participants could see limiting the all-round growth of our children. The need for educating and building capacity among the stakeholders directly associated with children is immense and so is the potential of a society that knows how to deal with the nuanced emotional state of its young masses. Workshops like this are a hope to bring about the change that we fail to fathom we need.

Credit – Ms. Srimaya Rath