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It’s becoming more and more common – children being diagnosed with mental illnesses. Modern psychiatrists are sympathetic to the harassed parents of these children. Russell Barkley, the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder expert, says it’s nobody’s fault when a child has a disorder. It is not due to bad parenting. He advises parents to go to a doctor, and says psychotropic medication is often very effective.

But good as it sounds if you are such a parent, I don’t know if it really helps us.

One, long-term outcomes with psychotropic drugs are simply not known now. How will your child do on twenty years of methylphenidate (Ritalin, for hyperactivity) or risperidone (Risperdal, for bipolar disorder)? To tell the truth, nobody knows yet.

Two, all children respond to respect, sympathy, and good teaching. Yes, it makes us feel guilty and terrible when someone says this, and doing more seems physically impossible sometimes. Take Maria Montessori – if you are a parent of a problem child, her work will be difficult to read. She accuses parents and teachers and is totally sympathetic to children.

But her methods work. Not many people know that she was a psychiatric doctor who, unlike most of her colleagues, believed that ‘uneducable’ children could be taught. Her ‘defective’ eight-year olds from a special school, taught by Montessori herself, succeeded in passing the state examination for normal children, and in fact did rather well.

For problem children, having just one adult (parent, grandparent, teacher) who believes in them can turn their lives around. Drugs cannot do that.

PeopleHealth is among the few firms that provide such preventive services. The Bangalore-based start-up has developed a tool that takes into account an array of information related to employees’ health, habits and lifestyle to assess the company’s health, and design an adapted preventive healthcare policy. Based on the results, PeopleHealth generates a health calendar for the company that may include assistance programmes, induction sessions, stress management courses and health plan utilisation incentives. The company caters to fifteen companies that rank among the world’s most popular IT, Internet and BPO firms. “Preventive health care programmes contribute to day-to-day efficiency and have positively impacted employees’ moral and motivation,” says Vikram Karayi, senior vice-president, Human Resources, Xansa India. The information technology firm has implemented an annual mandatory full health check up at the hospital for all its employees who are above 40 years old, along with regular health camps. “While studying our employees health, we found that many of our employees suffered from chronic cardiovascular illness, diabetes, blood pressure, and earlier detection can effectively reduce incidence of these diseases,” says Richard Lobo, head of employee relations at Infosys. The company, which is the country’s second-biggest software exporter, conducts a host of activities ranging from health check up camps, awareness sessions, counseling support, ergonomics counseling, on-line tools, stress audits, vaccination camps, to specialist consultations. Preventive health care can provide an answer to rising health insurance premiums. “We offer a hospitalization policy to all employees, their spouse, children and parents. This is critical for us as when our employees go off shore, we should not have to fly them back home in case of a relative has to be hospitalized,” says Lalit Kandpal, manager, compensation and benefits, Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. However, while the mindset is slowly changing, most Indian companies still look at preventive health care as a cost, rather than an investment, says Mr Mehdi. “Companies’ approach to health care should become more scientific,” agrees Mr Dutta. “Things may not change overnight, but it is a culture that corporates are slowly building in India,” he adds.