Talk on Organ Donation and Counselling the Grieving Families at The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM)

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  Ms. Janani, Asst Professor, Dept of Applied Psychology, BALM introducing Ms. Sujatha Suriyamoorthi to the students

  

  Ms. Sujatha Suriyamoorthi addressing the students

  

  Group activity on `Grief and its stages`

  On 21^st June 2018, Ms. Sujatha Suriyamoorthi, Manager – Information systems, MOHAN Foundation was invited as a Guest Lecturer by The Banyan Academy of Leadership in Mental Health (BALM) for a session on “Organ donation and Counselling the Grieving Families”. This was the 4^th consecutive year that she had been invited to address the students of BALM on various aspects of organ donation, transplantation and approaching the families. Around 50 students from the departments of Applied Psychology and Social Work in Mental Heathcare attended the session.

  Ms. Janani, Asst Professor, Dept of Applied Psychology, BALM introduced Ms. Sujatha to the students. The session was divided into 3 parts – Concepts of organ donation and transplantation, Counselling the grieving families and approaching them for organ donation and case study discussion.

  • Concepts - The different aspects of organ donation and transplantation - medical, legal, ethical, cultural and belief and socio-economic factors related to organ donation and transplantation were explained to the students. A lot of queries and discussions were addressed during the session such as organ trafficking, equity and transparency in organ allocation, green corridor, why not donation after circulatory death.  

   

  • Counselling - The second part of the programme was counselling the grieving families and approaching them for organ donation. The students were educated on the concept of grief, its stages, counselling process, the skills and characteristics of a counsellor, when and how to approach the families for organ donation.

   

  • Case study discussion – A couple of case studies were presented at the end. The students found the discussion as an effective medium to understand the counselling and its process in depth.

   

  A total of 15 students pledged to be an organ donor and picked up their donor cards. 

   

  
  
  Source-Sujatha Suriyamoorthi