IIT Madras Introduces Online Emotional Wellness Platform for Counselling

IIT Madras has come up with an online emotional wellness platform called 'YourDOST' to help students who are stressed out and for that, the institute has roped in a number of experts like life coaches, psychologists, and career coaches.

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This online emotional wellness platform aims to help students in different ways like-

• Increase awareness regarding mental wellness
• Break the prevalent social stigma for seeking psychological help on campus
• Help students to deal with stress

The mechanism has been introduced with the hope that a larger number of students would be more comfortable on an online forum than the traditional face-to-face method.

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How Online Counselling Will Function:

• The forum will be anonymous and functions similar to a chatroom
• Students will have a user ID
• Through Password, they can log onto a counselling session
• It is a one-on-one with a professional at the other end

Purab Jain, General Secretary of the student body said that there is a stigma attached to counselling. A lot of students are not comfortable taking up a counselling session in front of their friends in regular counselling in the campus. YourDOST will help them in overcoming these problems.

He also mooted the idea to bring such counselling to all levels of students/aspirants across the nation.

Side by side the institute is also bolstering its peer support network. The other guidance and counselling team like 'Mitr' and 'Saathi' are providing such services.