THE Education Ministry has come up with an initiative to monitor the mental health of students and help them cope with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The closure of schools and the abrupt shift towards online learning, combined with the admonition to stay put at home, may affect students mentally.
As such, counsellors in schools play a pivotal role in giving them moral support and guidance to ensure that these students are resilient and able to cope with the adjustments.
Kolej Tingkatan Enam Seri Ipoh counsellor Harbans Singh Najar Singh said the initiative is a Minda Sihat (Healthy Mind) screening test where students are required to answer several questions.
"This test helps the teachers to identify how stressed the student is especially during this pandemic because some of their parents might have lost their jobs and some of them do not have Internet facilities for online learning.
"The students are required to take this test. Once we find that their results do not reach our expectation, we will call them up to have a counselling session and might be able to refer them for medical treatment if necessary," he said.
Harbans said some of the students preferred to come to school rather than staying at home because they have friends to talk to and found that physical learning was better for them.
"But sometimes they are stopped from going to schools because their parents think that school is not a safe place. Here at this college, we would like to invite the parents to come and see what the school is doing.
"We will expose them to the procedures that their children need to follow once they enter the school. It is normal for parents to be worried, but such measures will convince them that the school is a safe place.
"People are living in uncertain times with the Covid-19 pandemic. We view mental health and development among students seriously, and this can be seen with the various initiatives having been introduced by the ministry and schools," he said.