Help uni. staff to recognise at risk students

"Thai undergraduate institutions haven't had any system to detect early signs showing who is risky involving adolescent problems, which is very different from secondary schools that created their own system to detect who has unwanted behaviour or risks facing problems," said Dr. Yongyud Wongpiromsarn, Department of Mental Health's senior advisor during the discussion held as part of Commission on Higher Education's national conference at Impact Arena, Muang Thong Thani.

"These institutions' lecturers will acknowledge that their students have faced problems only when they skip classes for many times or when they drop out of university. Undergraduate institution lecturers therefore should try to find early signs," he said.

Amornwich Nakhonthap of the monitoring group Childwatch and director of the Ramjitti Institute said university board, deans of faculties or heads of departments should learn students' risk factors first before giving a hand to solve their problems.

He also urged universities nationwide to carry out their own student survey like Childwatch survey to find specific groups of students that risk facing different problems, as they will be able to give proper assistance to right students when they what the real problems are.

"Our 2008 survey reported that porn clips have reached the most popular porn media among Thai youngsters for the past two years. About 3040 per cent of secondary students or older ones said they liked watching such clips," Amornwich said.

Stress and lacking of selfesteem were crucial causes arousing students to misbehave, he pointed out, and broken family and academic competitive education forced students to have such negative feelings.

"Many of them have decided to transfer their pain to people surrounding them —probably by attacking or disappointing them or sometimes they've decided to harm themselves when they don't get enough care or warmth and when they are considered as unsuccessful academic competitors," he added.

"Teachers should not judge their students only from their academic competitiveness but consider other abilities or accepted behaviour as well," Amornwich said.

The report also found that over 7,000 students aged less than 25 had tried to commit suicide last year; 54 per cent of respondents accepted living together before marriage; 42 per cent had drunk alcohol; 22 per cent had smoked and 15 per cent revealed they had been physically assaulted in their educational institutions.