“A silent pandemic in mental health is brewing,” asserts Dr Rita Aggarwal, well-known psychologist of the city, who has been honoured with ‘Rotary People of Action: Champions of Impact’ Award at Rotary International Convention held recently in Singapore. She also received the ‘Self Above Service’ Award for her commendable efforts in emphasising volunteerism. Dr Aggarwal, a member of the Rotary Club of Nagpur District 3030, is awarded for her project ‘Wellness in a Box’ which works with an objective of counselling students who show signs of anxiety, depression, and other psychological problems, and brings about a change in the existing mindset by creating awareness and building curriculum to train students, parents and teachers. To date, through the initiative, more than 2,200 students and 2,000 parents have been benefited. She is among six Rotarians across the world whose projects were awarded. “I feel honoured to receive this prestigious award. I am content the project got recognised. My team hopes that people will come forward to take this ahead,” expressed Dr Aggarwal. She founded the Rotary Action Group on mental health initiatives in 2016. She says it was amidst 2023 -2024 that these initiatives got a boost, and adds, “The Rotary International President Gordon McInally, a Scottish dental surgeon, prioritised mental health, and when the President puts his spotlight on a subject, then Rotary clubs across the world listen to him and work on it.”

 

Talking about ‘Wellness in a Box’, she says, “It is well structured, evidence-based, measurable, scalable and sustainable with a lot of impact. It is a project which has evolved, and has been implemented earlier in different countries before I did it in India. It is doable and replicable by different Rotary clubs and districts.” “To date, it has been done in five schools of Nagpur. After training and conducting sessions, we expect people to realise the need to consult because with awareness comes the confidence to seek help,” states Dr Aggarwal. She says that she realised that only few schools have a counsellor, most schools in the city do not want them. She adds, “The focus is on Class VIII students because according to the Indian statistics, the higher suicide rates is among the age group 15 to 29 years. So, instead of starting it with 15-year-olds, we decided to prevent the issue and started with 13-year-old students.”