In a country racked by an alarming rate of
suicide, the primary path for Cambodian psychology majors to help
schoolchildren cope with mental health issues has been cut off after the
government ceased recruiting them for its teacher-trainer program.
When the new academic year begins next month,
the National Institute of Education (NIE) will not be conducting its one-year
graduate program for psychology majors, which in years past has prepared
graduates to train Cambodia’s secondary school teachers.
“Unluckily for the majors in psychology this
year, we do not have it,” Mao Saroeun, an NIE spokesman, said on Friday. “The
Ministry of Education thinks we have a sufficient number of psychology
teachers.”
The NIE course is the only available avenue
for graduates to become certified to teach psychology at regional teacher
training schools. The training helps teachers learn how to motivate and empathize
with their students.
Chhaing Maraen, a third-year psychology
student at the Royal University of Phnom Penh (RUPP), had intended to enroll in
the NIE program after graduating next year. Her father, a teacher, credited his
psychology teacher at a regional training center for teaching him how to
motivate his students, the 20-year-old said.
“If we train the teachers, the results will
have a larger impact,” Ms. Maraen said at a Youth Mental Health Day event that
RUPP’s psychology department organized earlier this month.
The annual event began in 2013 after the
university completed a mental health survey that found a staggering rate of
suicide in Cambodia—about 42 per 100,000 residents, among the highest in the
world.
In 2014, the government hired 30 psychology
graduates to be high school counselors, said Bernhild Pfautsch, an adviser in
the psychology department at RUPP, but the initiative has not been repeated.
Likewise, there was no indication the teacher
training program would resume after this year’s hiatus, Mr. Saroeun said.
Education Ministry officials could not be
reached for comment.
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