Education and Mental Health of underprivileged girl children who have been severely affected by COVID-19 Lockdown

A girl does not have it easier than a boy. Right from the time she takes birth till the time she leaves her own body. The biases can be truly many and have been discussed, speculated and debated open for time immemorial.

 
So can a life of a girl from an underprivileged background be any different from the girl or for that matter a child belonging to a privileged background. The answer is it is way tougher and less fulfilling. Amidst that there are some girls who always find a way to excel due to a very strong conviction and drive irrespective of the situation they are in. 

However, what if the situation does not remain an occurrence anymore what if it becomes a catastrophe. What if it becomes a crisis which makes one contemplate on their very existence? This escalates towards witnessing the harrowed mindset which becomes skewed towards imbalance.

 
The one core essential to alleviate the panicked mindset is Education. What if that gets mellowed and undermined with the crisis as well?

The crisis we are referring to is the COVID’19 Pandemic. Education matters a lot to underprivileged girls especially to those girls who have witnessed the power of knowledge pre-COVID’19. When the COVID’19 crisis halted the decorum of gaining knowledge the mental state of the girls also got severely affected.

The reason been in this entire virtual domain where everything started taking place online… The underprivileged girls did not find room to cater to such a requirement. No matter how hard they tried to engage in other activities… It had been next to impossible considering everything was online/ virtual and mostly out of access.

The scenario in the respective households and even in the community became far more passive and that did not encourage interaction even within the household to avoid conflicts. This made all the girls stay cocooned in their shells of apprehension and uncertainty and this led to enormous anxiety Such high paramount of anxiety did affect their mental health or in its way to affect their mental health.  This in turn aggravated to several episodes of depression and also made one lose their sense of self-worth. Giving rise to irritation, aggression and clinginess.

This made the entire routine for the unprivileged girls go for a toss.  This is when they reached out to their elders and well-wishers… who were more or less sailing in the same boat and maybe were far more worried and hassled to even get across a meal for the day since everything had reached a state of lockdown.

The girls had to battle the vagueness of the mind in order to make their mental health resonate with the drive to do well.  The drive to do well dissipated severely because of the lockdown, though it did not diminish and fade away. It led towards desperation and it is in this very state of desire that they approached NGOs even in the time of the lockdown.

Deepalaya is one of the NGOs which has undertaken several workshops during the lockdown period to promote, propagate and propel many underprivileged girls towards a wholesome life by inculcating managing mental health drives.  Its endeavour is to progress in this path for a long time. We encourage you to support the future of underprivileged girls by securing their present by providing them education which in turn commemorates towards a sound mental health.

You can showcase support by way of a donation to Deepalaya. (www.deepalaya.org/donatenow.php)

About the Blogger

Trishna Patnaik, a BSc (in Life Sciences) and MBA (in Marketing) by qualification but an artist by choice. A self-taught artist based in Mumbai, Trishna has been practising art for over 14 years. After she had a professional stint in various reputed corporates, she realised that she wanted to do something more meaningful. She found her true calling in her passion that is painting. Trishna is now a full-time professional painter pursuing her passion to create and explore to the fullest. She says, "It’s a road less travelled but a journey that I look forward to everyday." Trishna also conducts painting workshops across Mumbai and other metropolitan cities of India. 
Trishna is an art therapist and healer. She works with clients on a one on one basis in Mumbai.

Trishna fancies the art of creative writing and is dappling her hands in that too, to soak in the experience and have an engagement with readers, wanderers and thinkers.