COIMBATORE: The Tamil Nadu Psychology Association has urged the state government to provide immediate counselling and rehabilitation services to the surviving children and their families affected by the stampede at TVK’s rally in Karur.

The association, on Friday, petitioned the chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Tamil Nadu State Commission for Protection of Child Rights pressing for these demands.

The association said that nine innocent children lost their lives, and several surviving children were affected in the stampede, which caused immense emotional and psychological trauma to the surviving children and their families. They must be provided with immediate counselling and rehabilitation services to address the psychological trauma caused by this tragedy.

As per the UNICEF recommendations for emergencies and mass gatherings, NCPCR must ensure the establishment of child-friendly safe spaces at public events, provision of emergency psychological support for affected children and parental awareness programmes to promote child safety.

The commission must also ensure that the safeguarding of children is the primary duty of parents, as negligence constitutes a violation of a child's fundamental right to protection.

The commission should intervene immediately to institute robust legal and monitoring mechanisms to prevent such tragedies in the future, the petition letter stated.

The association’s president K Balamurugan told TNIE that grief counselling is needed for the surviving children and for those traumatised after witnessing the deaths and tragic scenes in the stampede.

He added such counselling would help them gradually recover emotionally from the incident and pointed out that if they fail to undergo psychological counselling, they may develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

He said psychological counselling has not been provided to them so far, and the government should treat this as a serious issue and take steps to conduct a psychological counselling camp in the area.

According to sources from the mental health team in Karur, counselling was provided to people who were admitted to the government college hospital after the incident. However, no communication was given about offering counselling to others.

Repeated attempts to reach Karur District Collector M Thangavel went in vain.