Any psychological problem is curable, preventable and treatable, provided they are attended to by experts at an early stage, according to leading psychiatrist C. Ramasubramanian.
Speaking at the fifth anniversary of Speak2Us, a mental health helpline, here on Sunday, he said that early counselling or psychological intervention helped in any type of issues faced by people. Agencies such as Speak2Us played a key role in resolving them.
Appreciating the volunteers at Speak2Us helpline, he said it was a community mental health programme and involvement of trained people as volunteers facilitated in understanding the issues much faster. The salient feature of Speak2Us volunteers was to listen patiently whenever a caller reached out to them.
After understanding the problem from the callers, the volunteers connected them to experts and thus filled the gap. This was important and such a catalyst role would be highly appreciable, he said and appealed to media persons to bring about success stories in their publications and avoid negative reporting about individuals.
In a country like India, the presence of such helplines in every district would be welcome and trained volunteers would be able to bring about a change.
