Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper spoke with Bui Van Linh, deputy head ofthe Ministry of Education and Training's student affairs department,about the importance of counseling, especially at school.

What are your concerns about mental health counselling activities atschools, which you have said are often neglected and have led tonumerous regrettable consequences?

The years children spend inschool are a critical phase in the development of their personality andcharacter. They often have to deal with not just academic problems, butalso problems in their relationships with peers, family and teachers.

Withoutguidance and support to help them resolve their problems in a timelymanner, they may drop out, suffer from depression or turn to violence.

Acommon occurrence recently that has attracted public attention isviolence in schools. It's an alarming thing. Students aren't justviolent against their peers but also against teachers, and I believe thelack of attention to students' mental health had contributed greatly.

Inaddition, when we talk about school violence we often think aboutfights - but they're the tip of the iceberg. School violence takes manyforms, as students may feel they are being oppressed, threatened orbullied.

Left unresolved for long enough, those mental states canturn into clinical issues and become very difficult to treat. In somecases they may even lead to tragic incidents. It's school psychiatrists'mission to assist students and to prevent those incidents fromhappening.

School mental health counselling also aims to providestudents with life skills, such as the ability to avoid or overcomecrises in social relationships. Having a professional establishment forschool psychiatrists will help attract well-trained and dedicatedexperts, similar to models used in developed countries.

Whatwould you say to cities and provinces that are interested in bringingcounselling to their schools, but are afraid they won't be able toafford highly qualified psychiatrists?

We understand that itmay be difficult to hire mental health counsellors to permanentpositions, as the education system is pushing to reduce its size. Atemporary solution is to train existing teaching staff to perform thejob.

The ministry will quickly finish administrative proceduresto make mental health counsellors mandatory job positions for everyschool.

There have been educational psychology departments inmany Vietnamese pedagogical universities, but for some reason there wasno programme for school mental health counsellors until 2004. What doyou think about the lacking of qualified people in this aspect of oureducation system?

It is true that Vietnamese pedagogicaluniversities often focus on training teachers in technical andscientific subjects. Other fields that were considered supportive, suchas mental health counselling, haven't received much attention until now.

Theeducation system has realised the importance of having professional,dedicated mental health staff. However, to ensure successfulimplementation of the idea, we must learn how to integrate scientificprinciples and sound practices into the process.

The departmentis preparing for a conference at the end of the year to discuss a modelfor mental health counselling in Vietnamese schools. In the mean time,we are working with international organisations in related fields, andwe encourage schools with existing mental health facility to continue toimprove and contribute ideas to our working model.-VNA