GD Goenka University And Fortis Mental Health Program Host India’s Largest Summit On Risk Management For Adolescents

GD Goenka University in collaboration with Fortis Mental Health Program brought together school counsellors from across the country for ‘VARTAH: Values - Awareness – Reform – Thrive – Action - Hope. A summit on Managing Risk Behaviour for school children.

An innovative national-level school counsellors summit, VARTAH aims at nurturing a positive mental health culture within educational ecosystems and offers a distinctive platform for school counsellors and educators to engage in conversations focused on awareness, reforms, and actions concerning the well-being of children and adolescents.

The event featured insightful expert talks led by distinguished speakers from King’s University Canada, James Cook University, Singapore and several experts from international education. Sessions focussed on risk identification, proposing practical solutions to prevalent issues and challenges in child and adolescent mental health and examples of how these issues are managed across various geographical and cultural landscapes globally.

While addressing, Dr Samir Parikh, Chairperson, Fortis National Mental Health Program said “Empowering children in their formative years with skills for life that help them navigate through ups and downs with confidence, self-belief and resilience is essential, that takes them on their individual paths of success, are able to have meaningful relationships and contribute to the society."

Dr Parikh added that apart from the involvement of counsellors & teachers, there must be significant participation of parents in order to help the students to deal with their mental health. 

He also counted on the various factors that cause mental health imbalance among today's generation that include; psychological, physical as well as social reasons. 

At the age of adolescence, children mostly learn through what their curriculum includes, therefore Dr Parikh also mentioned the addition of mental health as one of the disciplines among the schools so that the concrete solutions to the mental health imbalance would expand effectively among a large number of students. 

The summit also aimed to upgrade the skills of the counsellors to help them to deal with the different mental health issues existing in this generation. 

Established in 2013 and located in Gurugram, Delhi NCR, GD Goenka University is a leading multi-disciplinary institution of higher education. Established with a vision to redefine education and empower the next generation of thought leaders, the university rooted in a rich heritage of culture and armed with a forward-looking approach, offers undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral programmes that transcend traditional boundaries and equip our students with the skills and knowledge to thrive in an ever-evolving global economy.