Brac Institute of Educational Development (BIED) yesterday launched a centre to address the mental and sexual health issues of adolescents in Bangladesh.
Through recent research conducted in 2012, Brac IED found that adolescent girls are more in need of counselling to deal with eve-teasing and sexual assault.
Centre for Psychosocial Wellbeing and Sexual Reproductive Health, Rights and Gender (SRHRG) has thus been formed to address mental and sexual health issues among adolescents in poverty-stricken communities.
The launch was held at Brac Centre with BIED members and mental health experts discussing the importance of addressing mental health across all echelons of society and removing the stigma that still surrounds it.
“The vision is to improve emotional well-being, in mediation with SRHRG, for adolescents, children and community members. And the goal is to create a gender sensitive environment,” Anisa Haq, Programme Head at BIED, said at the event.
Dr Mehtab Khanam, Professor, Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology at Dhaka University, spoke about treating children and adolescents with dignity and respect.
“In our culture, we have a concept that only the elders are to be respected by children, and children are only to be loved by adults,” she said. “But we need to respect children as well. They need respect.”
“At first they used to not accept us,” Borsha Paulina Mondol, one of the counsellors in the field, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“This is part of a larger problem of lack of education among the parents,” Borsha said. “In a family where parents are uneducated, they often fail to understand the need of the children in these areas. But over time, they have begun to trust us,” she added.
