Fortis Healthcare launches a story-telling campaign ‘Weaving skills through tales and folktales’

• “The objective is to cultivate learning techniques using story-telling modules
• The campaign has reached out to over 36 schools across 8 states”

 Monday, May 21, 2018:

The Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences of Fortis Healthcarerecently launched a series of storytelling modules, ‘Weaving Skills through tales and folktales.’ The campaign was launched as a national campaign of the Fortis School Mental Health Programme. Till date, 68 workshops in 36 schools across Delhi NCR, Mohali, Mumbai, Udaipur, Indore, Panipat, Kolkata and Jaipur have been successfully conducted. Each workshop is 45 minutes long followed by a round of questions and answers. The campaign is led by Dr Samir Parikh, Director, Mental Health & Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare.

The modules have been designed for primary school students (Panchatantra tales and problem solving), adolescents (abstract thinking using stories), schoolteachers (stories as an effective approach to thinking) and parents (parenting tips using stories and storytelling). A trained team of mental healthcare professionals administer these workshops.

Dr Samir Parikh, Director, Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare said, “We believe stories have lasting impacts on the lives of young people. It allows them to identify with characters and situations, also helps them to become creative and connected with the cultural roots at he same time. We used stories from Panchtantra with children and they enjoyed it. We conducted our School Counselor Forum series on Storytelling as a Psychotherapeutic Method for  over 40 school counselors, and helped them learn the application of story telling in counseling for child and adolescent psychological issues.

The objective is to introduce new and innovative techniques to enable learning. The establishment of a higher recall value using stories as a learning medium is the originality of this campaign. In the past, values and learnings have been passed down from generation to generation through the medium of stories. However, in today’s fast paced world, no one uses stories as a medium to impart wisdom and advice. Every adult is focused on maximizing time in the most efficient manner, and to do so the art of storytelling is lost.