Causes And Consequences Of Stigma Leading To Mental Disorders Among Leprosy Affected: Key Elements In The Process Of Counselling To Improve Mental Health Care

Despite counselling has been in practice for quite a long time not yet an essential ingredient in leprosy control programmes especially in India nor a standardised system is available for prevention of mental disorders. With the broad objective to fulfil this need an action research was carried out to explore the unfulfilled needs of leprosy affected that are creating crisis situations lead to mental health issues while experimenting a practicably affective process of counselling system and document the essential stages to be involved in carrying out inter-personal counselling on each ones unique problems. The study was conducted by the Psych-social counselling and Guidance Centre of Gandhi Memorial Leprosy Foundation on 146 leprosy affected. Counselling provided by trained counsellors in every monthly visit for MDT till declared RFT or afterwards. ResultsSystematic process of counselling needs to be caried out in the following five essential stages viz Rapport Establishment, Identification of Crisis Situation, Psycho-Social Diagnosis, Prescription of Counselling Elements and Fulfilment of counselling elements Majority or psychological problems initially develop due to cognitive issues of affected individuals, their family members, society members, work place, institutions and treatment centres etc. If not attended at initial stage result to treatment compliance issues leading to deformity which accelerates adjustment problems in the family, society, workplace, educational and other institutions thus in turn lead in to unemployment, stigmatization of the patient from family and all sorts of mental disorders.. prior to reaching the stage of needing treatment. The study concludes that a systematic counselling addressing the issues at the cognitive level also including decision makers in the family, along with leprosy treatment can be a successful method to prevent the mental health problems and throw light towards zero stigma