Dr K Porpavai

Pathways was registered as a charitable trust in Coimbatore on 31 January 2014 with three trustees, Ms Sridevi Bhavani, Mr Senthil Kumar and me. It is hard to believe that we have been effective for ten years as it was not an easy task with me living in Australia and trying to run the organisation in India. I want to take this opportunity to thank all who have supported us in the process and to reflect on the tasks that we have been able to accomplish in the last ten years.

As an expatriate psychiatrist I had always wanted to do some work in my birthplace. The time was right in 2014 with my children in high school and with years of experience in the field giving me the confidence to start this project. I am very grateful to Ms Sridevi and Mr Senthil Kumar for supporting me at the start. We had a change of trustees in 2020 when Dr Selvaraj (well-known psychiatrist and long-term supporter of Pathways), Dr Revathy (highly respected family doctor), Mrs Srividhya Narayanan (student from the first cohort of PG-CAMH course and counsellor) and Mr Ramakrishnan (Business owner) joined as trustees. We moved into our own office in RS Puram in February 2019.

PG-CAMH course:

In the first three years we were able to conduct some community education sessions. In December 2017 we started the post-graduate certificate course in child and adolescent mental health (PG-CAMH) with 23 students. Initially this course was available only for people who were able to attend in person with classes conducted over Zoom. We were using this interface way in advance before it became a common tool.  Dr Selvaraj very kindly offered space at Vazhikatti to conduct classes. We moved the class to our space in RS Puram in 2019. In 2020 students were unable to attend in person due to Covid after which we were able to open the course to students from other states. We have had 146 students enrol in the course between 2018 and 2023. The classes for the eighth cohort are starting next week with 21 students. Dr Pravin Dullur, Dr Seema Padencheri and I presented a symposium on the six-year outcome of the course at the IACAPAP conference in Brazil in May 2024. The outcomes have been overwhelmingly positive giving us the much needed energy to continue. This is a big feat for a small organisation such as ours.

I would like to express my gratitude to all the faculty who have taught in our program for the last seven  years. My sincere thanks to Dr Ajit Kumar, Dr Soumya Basu, Dr Vibhay Raykar, Dr Tejas Golhar, Dr Meenakshisundaram Shanmugam, Dr Chidambaram Prakash, Dr Seema Padencheri, Dr Sangeetha Karunakaran, Dr Seetha Gopalakrishna, Dr Satya Raj, Dr Manohari Shroff, Dr Suhas Chandran, Dr Vikram Palanisamy, Dr Chhtij Srivastava, Dr Avinash Kamath, Dr Natasha Saldana, Dr Anil Kumar TV, Dr Abishek Bala, Dr Sowmya Bhaskaran, Dr Rani Samuel, Dr Selvaraj and Dr Pravin Dullur. I would like to extend my thanks to all the presenters who have presented at our four annual conferences so far. Without the support of these wonderful people, we would not have been able to sustain delivering such a high-quality learning experience for our students. I would like to thank our past students, Dr Manimala Srinivasan and Dr Preethi who have joined as tutors to help evaluate assignments.

Our students are the biggest source of support. Our organisation has been financially self-sufficient without any external funding fully through the student enrolment. I wish to thank each and every one of our students who have enabled us to keep going.

Pathways to Effective Parenting

This is a manualised parent training program developed by me. We have provided training in this program to two groups of our PG-CAMH graduates.

THRIVE School Mental Health Curriculum

Dr Shilpa and Mrs Srividhya have developed THRIVE curriculum which Is a mental health promotion initiative and have been delivering it at schools in Coimbatore for the last two years with the support of Mr Younus and Mrs Tharageshwari. We are currently evaluating this program with a view to developing a manual.

Other activities

We have been providing  assessments and treatment through our Pathways Clinic located in RS Puram, Coimbatore.

We provide training and consultation to a few orphanages in Coimbatore.

Our staff have been actively involved in community activities, including mental health promotion programs through activities during the World Mental Health month in October every year.

Many of our alumni are active advocates for children and youth mental health.

Personally speaking, running Pathways has been an immensely fulfilling experience. I have met many generous people and have learnt a lot from them.

I am reminded of the words of Helen Keller, American author and activist, “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much” and of

Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”