An Integrated Approach to the delivery of Child Mental Health Services

Since 1947, the Government of India has made several provisions for the welfare of children. Initially these appeared in an ad-hoc fashion as a part of various 5-year plans but from 1974 these have come out as a series of long term and integrated policy documents. I refer to the following. 1. Integrated Child Development Services - ICDS (1972) 2. National Policy for Children (1974) 3. National Mental Health Programme for India (1982) 4. National Policy on Education (1986) 5. Integrated Education for Disabled - IEDC (1988) While these documents contain very welcome recommendations for the well being of children, they touch upon the issues of child mental health only indirectly. Further, they do not set up any priorities; nor do they offer any data, which would help to set up the priorities.