R. P. Soni, District Judge & Dr Aparna Singh (Ph.D), Counsellor, Family Court, Katni
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Family is an essential part of life. After post COVID era which imposed the uncertainty, everyone realizes the importance of family yet family faces a lot of challenges in these years, and changed its nature. In addition, the ability of many families to meet their basic needs has been weakened by circumstances beyond their control, resulting in their breakdown. Due to unfulfilled needs and desires, matrimonial disputes occurs which can ruin one’s life and can’t be restored easily and affected whole life.
Objectives: Based on these premises, we have planned to pen down own experiences of counselling in family court. The present study focused on the fact that incidence of marital breakdown in MP is increased in recent years, which not only negatively affected the couples, the whole family especially the children undergo severe traumatic experience.
Material & Methods: For assessment we have used Kuppuswamy socio-economic status scale, mental status examination, personality descriptions any history of mental illness in the family, any discord between family member, mental examination including general appearance and behaviour, spontaneous mortality and speech (flow form, level of development of speech), affective behaviour (any evidence of anxiety, fear, depression, attitude) attitudes towards family, self made open ended questionnaire was developed with the aim of gaining comprehensive understanding including family history, date of marriage, time of togetherness, time of separation, cause of disputes, upbringing of children, economic issues, family members, personal habits, personal matters, geographical and surroundings, cultural differences, religious or socio-cultural differences, matters related to children and other assessment tools like personality tests, behavioural test etc. based on understanding of the most significant factors. The data from the questionnaire were entered and analysed by using qualitative analysis in SPSS Package.
Sample: The data for the study were collected in family court, Katni from June 2021 to January 2022. The participants were either petitioner or respondent in court and those cases which was referred for counselling to the appointed counsellor by Family Judge. The number of cases seen by counsellor per day ranged from 1-5 and the session duration ranged from half an hour to more than an hour.
Observations: While analyzing the data it was seen that the majority of the clients reported (41%) that harassment started immediately after marriage followed by one year (37%) and about 14% clients reported that harassment started after over 3 years of married life. Majority of clients belongs to rural background and lower socioeconomic status followed by urban background and middle socioeconomic status. Very few belong to upper socioeconomic status. The majority of the clients mentioned abuse and physical assaults were the main types of harassment followed by dowry demand, domestic violence, alcoholism and extra marital affairs where as some reported threats and drug abuse followed by attempt to murder. Some other reasons for marital breakdown include constant conflicts, financial differences, character assassination, compatibility issues, adjustment problems, growing individualism, undesirable impact of outside world, mental illness, suspicion, suicidal attempts exerting unnecessary control and wanting to get things done your way. Rigid thought process and blame game is one that can kill a marriage in spite of gender difference. Differential philosophies, lack of communication can create hurdle in normal life. Sometimes, men or women do fail to develop a strong sense of commitment and sincerity towards their marriage and spouse.
Despite the limited resources, as well as limited duration and number of sessions there is all possible efforts done to engage with couples in conflict, to assess couple’s distress on multiple levels. The goals which kept in mind is problem solving, exploring or identifying the problem, exploring alternatives and providing solutions, conflict resolution, maintaining healthy relationships, settlement of present dispute, to facilitate constructive and rational thoughts. Try to facilitate reconciliation by talking to couples about consequences of separation. These included trying to reconcile for the purpose of child welfare, to make them understand the consequences of separation. Focused on settlement only if, reconciliation was not possible with a couple. If bitterness of relationship disturbed someone’s life then it is good to get separate with mutual consent. The key goal is to provide emotional support and to facilitate a humanitarian settlement, try to develop holistic attitude towards conflict resolution. I am trying to use some skills of my training like acceptance, active listening, empathy, facilitating ventilation, paraphrasing, summarizing, observation, non-judgemental attitude, reassurance, using open ended questions etc. use of these micro skills is crucial for effective counselling. It helps couples feel understood, respected, accepted and emotionally charged to reduce their stress. I have also try to use cognitive behavioural therapy, role plays, emotional finger tapping, behaviour therapy, self help exercises, psycho-education and life skill training if possible. First of all take separate session of couples and then joint session.
Conflict in marriage is inevitable, when two people get together; obviously some of the belief systems, habits, attitudes and personality of one will annoy and disturb the others in spite of love. In healthy relationships, couples learn to accept the differences and resolve their conflicts. But in unhealthy relationship marital conflicts arises due to several small reasons and create hurdle in normal life. It leads to maladjustment and major cause of marital disturbances.
Conclusion: There is some literature on the number of cases filed and their reasons, the process of counselling and experience of counsellor has not received adequate attention. It was found that there is lack of literature based on counselling. So this paper is first in this regards. This paper presented process of counselling and experience reported by counsellor working at family court, Katni district, MP (India). The case loads, work environment, types of problems reported by client are also highlighted. In the light of our observations, we propose an action plans and emphasized the need of permanent post and facilities for counsellors providing proper working environment and equal importance in family court can improve working condition and results. There is need to provide separate counselling center in family court. Counselling should be treated as an active practice like lawyers. It should be considered serious and professional job. It was also suggested that continuous training for counsellors should be provided, due to its interdisciplinary nature association of societies, and psychologists may be useful. Future research is needed on various issues such as behavioural problems, personality, attitudes, mental health of children of divorced couples, coping strategies adopted by women belonging to broken homes. Such studies should hopefully result in providing suggestions for formulation of proper intervention strategies and packages of preventive programmes.
Keywords: Counselling, Family court, Divorce, Marital Counselling, Couple Counselling
