Counseling centres see increase in demand for Kannada

With grief and anxiety clouding the city, many are look for counselling services in their mother tongue

With the second wave of Covid-19 rampant in the country, many have turned to grief counsellors to deal with the pain and loss caused by the pandemic.

However, there still exists an aura of uncomfortableness and stigma that surrounds mental health and therapy in India.

“As a country, we are dealing with a cultural and emotional literacy issue. Collectively we find it hard to find the right words when we want to seek mental health support. It is still seen as a disability or disadvantage. On top of that language is a big barrier in this context,” says Dr Anand Lakshman, CEO of Address Health.

He believes that while the youth in the city have a more positive approach towards mental health, it is not the same case with other generations and that the language barrier might be one of the major reasons to blame for this problem.

“If there are counselling services available in local languages, while it may not solve the entire problem, it surely makes it one step easier to make those wary about therapy get a better understanding of its importance,” he adds.

He recently helped singer Raghu Dixit set up a free counselling helpline 'Manadani', available in Kannada among other languages.

Other therapy centres are also now providing mental health counselling in Kannada.

Heart It Out, a centre with 13 counsellors, started providing therapy in Kannada last year, after receiving many requests.

About 20 per cent of the clientele prefer speaking in Kannada and other Indian languages, says Nithya J Rao, co-founder.

The Koramangala-based group, which charges Rs 500 a session for students and Rs 1000 for others, says about 200 people call every month from Tier-2 cities in Karnataka.

“Last year we realised we were abandoning a large portion of society by offering services only in English. We now offer services in 11 languages,” Nithya says.

Counsellor Vimala Manohar finds older people and techies who have moved to Bengaluru from smaller cities find it easier to open up about their problems in Kannada.

“Right now, the two emotions that cloud the city are grief and guilt and there is no language better than the mother tongue to express these emotions,” she observes.

With counsellors getting their education in English primarily, it takes some additional work and practice to switch to another language, says Nithya.