Counselling

The Institute has constituted a structure of Institute Counselling Services Cell (ICSC) for effectively handling issues like emotional difficulties, academic deficiencies, health and physical debility, interpersonal issues, career, and psychological matters etc. and headed by a Faculty-in Charge to extend empowerment to the Counselling Cell and to extend professional counselling services. Our mission is to address the mental health needs of the IISERB community. While most of our work involves one-to-one or group counselling with students, we are also involved in consultation, outreach, training, and other activities to strengthen IISER Bhopal as an institution dedicated towards learning, personal, and community development. The structure of ICSC comprises Institute Faculty, Counsellors, Medical Officer, Student Representatives from PhD, PG and UG Programmes. Through various activities of the Counselling Cell like lectures, workshops, and visits by experts regularly, we strive to assist our community members in identifying, understanding, and solving problems. Each year many students seek assistance at Counselling Cell for a wide variety of problems and concerns like; depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders, family related issues, adjustment difficulties, relationship conflicts, etc. Students are seen for short term counselling by the counsellors in our staff. If the issues the student brings cannot be adequately addressed in our brief therapy model, we assist the student in finding an appropriate referral resource. Furthermore, students have been nominated as student volunteers. They are associated with the Counsellors, Faculty mentors to work as Student Volunteers/Peer student counsellors.