NOIDA: The district administration of Gautam Budh Nagar unveiled a drive on Friday to spread mental health awareness and make counselling available even in the rural areas of the district. Stating that the land acquisitions has left an impact on the well-being of rural people leading to socio-economic uncertainties, the district magistrate, BN Singh, launched a slogan ‘Swasthya Mann Swasth Bharat’. The initiative is supported by a leading private university’s research division.Since Wednesday, the university has been sending its students to five villages in Gautam Budh Nagar to stage street plays to help speak about mental health, bring it out in the open and remove stigma from talking about it. This will be followed by intervention of counselling for the villagers. The volunteers for the programme said, the main issues among the villagers presently are alcoholism , addiction, anxiety and heavy reliance of witchdoctors for curing mental health related issues.“Gautam Budh Nagar is a new district. Things here are still evolving. The land-acquisition carried out by the Authorities have rendered a lot of farmers unsure about their future as most of them have misused the money they received as compensation. There is uncertainty among their children when it comes to their future. Also, there has been a complete lack of care for the notified areas. While civic and social issues have not been attended to by the Authorities because of their lack of infrastructure or scope, a large chunk of the district has been neglected,” the DM said.The official also pointed at severe lack of attention to people’s needs in large part of the district which should ideally be executed in the manner in which a municipality functions.“The work that a municipality does in a city when it comes to attending to the needs and concerns of citizens has completely gone amiss. A migrant population here also have no stakes in its well-being. Attention needs to be given at micro level of the society so that people get a sense of stability and belonging, else mental health as well as sociological problems here could be on a rise,” said Singh.“We will start with the skits then reach out with the counselling facility. The findings would be documented and submitted to the administration, the state health department and the World Health Organisation. According to our findings, 88% of Noida’s population comprises of youth. Maximum stress now needs to be given on managing the mental and emotional health of these young people so that they do not lose hope of go astray while forging their future,” said Abha Singh, dean of social sciences, Amity University.

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