Manipur Violence: According to a government press release citing information provided by the state social welfare department, 12,694 children are among the nearly 50,000 people who have been forced to flee their homes due to ethnic conflict and are living in relief camps throughout the state of Manipur. Of these children, 100 are severely traumatised and in need of professional counselling.
Expert Counseling for Traumatized Children
According to the statement, volunteers from the social welfare department’s staff of licenced doctors and child psychiatrists offer expert counselling to people who have experienced significant trauma. “Whenever they find such severely traumatised children, they will be identified, and taken to professional counsellors. We’ve done this for a little more than 100 children. We hope that this number does not increase and these traumatised children can go back to normal very soon,” said Ng Uttam Singh, director of the social welfare department. “A child may not be traumatised immediately. But that trauma can come up after one week or a month,” he said.
Identifying and Supporting Traumatized Children
To address the mental health of the displaced children, counsellors are sent out by district children protection agencies in every district. According to him, they go to children’s houses in relief camps to provide counselling and to find kids who really need it. In order to prevent a wide range of mental health difficulties from arising, according to child psychiatrist Dr. Jina Heigrujam, who has visited various relief camps to identify children with post-traumatic stress disorder, professional counselling is important. At relief camps, the department’s trained field employees identify children who are stressed out and use “play and dance” ways to do so. The displaced youngsters are given drawing pencils and papers and instructed to sketch or draw anything they want after the play and dance group practise.
Efforts to Make Relief Camps Child-Friendly and Ensure Healthcare
The status of the relief camps in terms of their child-friendliness is another issue that the social welfare department is attempting to address. Due to the fact that the relief camps are unplanned and constructed as needed, a UNICEF team that visited the state provided instructions for building child-friendly relief camps. According to the social welfare director, weekly review meetings are held at the chief secretary’s level to prevent childcare shortages in relief camps.
According to a press release, the department also keeps a close eye on kids who are extremely undernourished and sends them to Imphal’s state-run JNIMS hospital for treatment. 16 kids have received treatment for severe malnutrition thus far. Officials led by Manipur Chief Secretary Dr. Vineet Joshi have been touring relief camps to assess the living conditions of the youngsters housed there, the announcement noted. Since the first week of May, Manipur has been the scene of ethnic warfare that has resulted in more than 150 fatalities and close to 50,000 displaced residents.
