Now, IOP to have a speciality clinic on Child Behavioural Addiction

Kolkata: Concerned over the rising cases of suicide due to depression among children between the age group of 12 and 16 years, Institute Of Psychiatry (IOP) is opening a speciality clinic on Child Behavioural Addiction.

"In the last few months we have noticed that depression is affecting children at a very early age. The age group suffering from mental depression was prevalently in the 19-35. But now, it is in the age group of 12-16," Director of IOP Pradip Kumar Saha said. According to Saha, depression which is presently ranked sixth in terms of disease affecting human beings will become number 2 in 2020 thereby, emerging as a global crisis. IOP which is the third oldest surviving mental hospital in the country has nearly 900 patients attending its outdoor daily and 10 percent of the patients belong to the age group of 12 to 16. Saha attributes the concept of nuclear family and the absence of a role model before a child to the rising instances of depression among them. "We have found out while diagnosis of such cases that a working father and mother hands over a lot of expensive gifts to the child but the emotional bonding is absolutely not there. Children are living in an isolated world and hence are getting addicted to games like Blue Whale," he said.

In a word of advice to the parents, Saha tells them to spend as much time as possible with their children. "Doing some small things can work wonders. For example: Give your child at least half-an-hour when you should do what your child wants you to do. Hold a meeting at the dinner table on Saturday or Sunday night and make him decide the food menu for two days in the coming week," advised Saha. IOP has a child psychiatry ward and a child adolescence clinic in its campus on DL Khan Road.

IOP has played a significant role in training mental health professionals from 1989, when it was designated as the training and research wing for psychiatry, of the Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata. It enjoys the hybrid status of being a mental hospital, which also functions as a general hospital psychiatry set-up of a tertiary postgraduate medical training institute.