To take home the message of ill-effects of drug usage, students of psychology department of Thiagarajar College of Arts and Science armed with an intense method have jumped into the work of educating each and every student in their college.
Though carrying out rallies and erecting banners with messages on the ill-effects of drug usage could create some impact in the public, the efficiency of such Information Education and Communication (IEC) system is limited in transferring the entire message to the targeted audience.
Students of psychology department have formed 20 groups with three members each and have taken up the job of passing on the awareness message to the students in a more personal way.
As they have been trained to converse with fellow human beings in a more nuanced and sensitive manner, the students felt they could work on creating awareness more efficiently.
D. Sivaraj, 2nd year student and a team member, said, they felt the normal awareness messages would be just warning the drug users of how it would affect their health and their family.
“But, when the people are made aware of what they would have to go through both medically and mentally, once they fall ill due to the usage of drug, it will make them think and eventually help them come out of the practice,” he added.
When they hear about the gory situations they would be subjected to during their treatment, psychologically it would push everyone to think about the ill-effects of drugs, Mr. Sivaraj added.
A.D. Janani, a team member and 3rd year student, said, a study showed that more than 4 lakh families have been abandoned as their prime bread winner had lost his life to the usage of drugs.
“This could be just a message if written on a wall or a paper, but making one realize what it is to lose their family for a short-time pressure, would be really impactful,” she added.
“We, through cinema and media, know how it would break a family when they lose someone important. To make the audience visualize the scenarios is the most important job we have to undertake as psychology students,” Ms. Janani noted.
Making note of various studies which proved that making people realize the negative effects of any bad habits would help them come out of the habit, M. Nagarajan, Head of Department, Department of Psychology, said, “only on a trial-and-error basis we tried this method by using our own students, but it had reached the students well.”
“Many students from other departments after listening to these students, have reached us personally for counselling and advice. This is what we consider as success more than anything else,” he added.
The department has also planned to tie-up with any non-governmental organisations or social welfare department to continue the work of intrinsically passing the message of ill-effects of drugs among the public, he noted.
