Good education can tackle psychiatric issues: Baghel

AGRA : The experts discussed issues related to new challenges posed by internet addiction, pornography and online gambling, in this age of digital media, on the second day of the three-day 29th National Conference of Indian Association for Social Psychiatry 2022.

The conference inaugurated by chief guest Prof SP Singh Baghel, union minister of state for law and justice and MP from Agra, on Friday will conclude on Sunday.

The guest of honour was Prof Anshu Rani, the vice-chancellor of the Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar University of Agra.

“There is a need for a better understanding of psychiatric problems and parents can play a major role by keeping an eye on their children and reporting any abnormality to a medical expert, instead of hiding it. A good education can be an effective tool to tackle ever-growing psychiatric issues,” said union minister Baghel.

“Scientific counselling should be promoted and awareness be increased to meet out the challenges posed due to psychiatric disorders otherwise neglected,” he said.

“The theme of this 29th National Conference of Indian Association for Social Psychiatry 2022 is ‘changing concepts of mental health and ill health in the new millennium. The three-day conference is having sessions on different topics with experts discussing the issues of social psychiatry,” stated Dr UC

Garg, the organising chairman of the conference.

“There are about 200 mental health experts attending the conference. Those performing well and contributing to the field of mental health are being awarded and the list of speakers includes Amandeep Sandhu, Dr Mathew Varghese from NIMHANS Bengaluru, Dr Debashis Basu from PGI Chandigarh, Dr RK Chaddha from AIIMS and Dr Amit Ranjan Basu from Raipur,” informed Dr Garg.

“Thrust area had been behavioural addiction in this age of the internet. Experts pondered over challenges being posed by internet addiction, pornography, online gambling and the borderline where a habit turns into an addiction and turns to an illness” stated said Dr Ashutosh K Gupta, organising secretary of the conference.

More than 100 students in postgraduation courses presented their research papers during the conference, he added.

MORE THAN 100 STUDENTS IN POSTGRADUATION COURSES PRESENTED THEIR RESEARCH PAPERS DURING THE CONFERENCE