Emphasis is on counselling parents of mentally challenged

Hyderabad: The Manasa Institute of Child Health and Disability Studies in Mohan Nagar of the Kottapeta Division is the brainchild of 13 professors working in Raja Bahadur Venkata Ramireddy Women’s College, Narayanaguda.

The Institute underlined the need for imparting specialised training to parents of the physically challenged rather than imparting education to such challenged persons. The founders of the school with the help of the friends and contributions from others set up the institute in 1991. Experiences of mothers of three challenged persons formed the basis for launching the institute. It started with just three mentally challenged students, one teacher and an ayah. It commenced in a rental premises at Barkatpura.

Currently, there are 85 students in the school, which has all infrastructural amenities. Free transportation amenities are provided to the students. Specially trained teachers and their assistants are running the classes, institute’ s secretary Sarva Lakshmi and director Ramakrishna said. Skilled and experienced teachers are running the classes for the mentally challenged. Their area of focus are identifying the skills, using the intelligence of students in an appropriate way and other aspects.
Services of psychotherapy, physiotherapy and speech therapy experts are always at hand.

The institution also counsels parents and holds seminars and workshops to give suggestions to the parents. Treating the mentally challenged with love and affection, the institution conducts classes adopting the play way methods. The classes are also useful in driving away despair among the mentally challenged persons.