V S Bose
Professor of Psychology
Counseling
While working at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA, I had the opportunity to attend a workshop on counselling, in the department of Education in order to counsel American students who came to India as part of their academic program. Subsequently, my training in Behaviour Therapy at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro-Sciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore gave me a structured way of dealing with many problems for which the behaviour therapy was applicable.
I handle varieties of cases in my clinical practice. Adolescents with adjustment problems, some childhood problems where mostly parents need counseling help, other types of problems like marital problems, emotional problems are some that I attended to. Most of the problems that I have seen so far are stress-related. Most people who come to me for help hear of me from former clients or through word of mouth. My practice keeps me busy, counselling for nearly eight hours a day besides my regular workload as a professor at Andhra University. In 2003, I was awarded a Gold Medal by the Indian Medical Association, Tenali, Andhra Pradesh in recognition of my vast clinical experience.
After a decade of experience in counselling I have come to realize that there is a great need for counselling in India and the expertise for this is just not available. In India there is a notion that only the severely mentally ill need counselling and therapy and approaching a psychologist or a psychiatrist is a stigma. To eliminate this false notion I developed a model for counselling people with common problems related to stress. This training module can be given to small groups of people at a time. The training module helps people understand how stress affects them and how one can develop effective methods to cope with stress through ‘Thought Transformation’. This model can be given both as a preventive and a remedial tool. I have been using this module in several educational as well as industrial organisations and their response has been tremendous!