The covid mindfield
By Tanushree Sen
With some therapists handling up to 50 calls a day and heading into a burnout, 2021 turned out to be the year counsellors needed counselling
Covid brought health into focus. Not just physical health, but mental health too. And if we’ve managed to be on an even keel, it’s thanks to the many, many mental health professionals who have held our hands and our heads.
Roseline Gomes, a professor of psychology at
Jyoti Nivas College, is a counsellor, educator, and freelance mental health consultant as well. In her 10 years of practice, Gomes saw her client list double during the pandemic. Earlier, she would speak to seven to nine clients for roughly four to six hours a day, but in the last year, that has increased to 14 hours (15 to 18 calls) a day. This naturally took its toll on Gomes and she has now stopped taking extreme cases and is only counselling college students. “In the washroom, I would sometimes sit, blank, listening to the sound