In a significant step towards strengthening the rehabilitation and socio-economic reintegration ecosystem for persons affected by substance abuse, the Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo today dedicated to public the Rehabilitation Centre for District Srinagar at the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (IMHANS), Srinagar.
Those who were present on this occasion includes Principal Secretary Home; Commissioner Secretary, Health & Medical Education; Commissioner Secretary, Social Welfare; Divisional Commissioner Kashmir; Deputy Commissioner Srinagar; Principal, GMC Srinagar; Head, IMHANS Srinagar and other faculty members and doctors of the institute.
The Centre marks the operationalisation of the Phase-I pilot of the Rehabilitation & Socio-Economic Reintegration Scheme for Drug Abuse Victims, 2026, initiated by the Social Welfare Department in coordination with the Health & Medical Education Department, district administration and other concerned stakeholders.
After inaugurating the Centre, Chief Secretary, Atal Dulloo, went around the facility and took detailed note of the various facilities and spaces created for its functioning, including the doctors’ rooms, patient and family counselling spaces and group therapy facilities, besides the arrangements for referral and emergency linkages.
The Chief Secretary appreciated the efforts made in creating the Centre and expressed hope that it would serve as the beginning of a sustained and long-term rehabilitation journey for the victims, enabling them to regain confidence, reconnect with their families and communities and progressively return to productive and dignified lives.
He observed that the operationalisation of the Centre was an important first step towards translating the rehabilitation policy into a practical, ground-level mechanism and expressed the hope that the experience gained here would help in initiating and strengthening the implementation of the policy in other districts of J&K as well. He stressed that the pilot should generate practical learning for refining the framework and facilitating its subsequent expansion across the Union Territory.
The Chief Secretary emphasised that the success of the initiative would depend upon sustained coordination among the concerned departments, health institutions, district administrations and community-level stakeholders, with each stakeholder performing the designated role with commitment.
The Commissioner Secretary, H&ME, M.Raju remarked that the centre has been envisaged as a comprehensive support mechanism extending beyond treatment and de-addiction to facilitate the rehabilitation, recovery, family engagement and socio-economic reintegration of beneficiaries.
He detailed that the initiative follows the directions of the Chief Secretary during the high-level review of preparedness for the Phase-I pilot, wherein IMHANS Srinagar was identified as one of the principal pilot institutions for implementing the rehabilitation model on the ground.
The Commissioner Secretary, Social Welfare, Sarmed Hafeez remarked that the newly inaugurated Centre will bring together a multidisciplinary support framework involving medical assessment, counselling, social-work intervention, family engagement, case management, referral and follow-up, with a focus on developing an Individual Rehabilitation Plan for each beneficiary.
He added that the model seeks to address the multiple dimensions of substance-use disorders by ensuring that beneficiaries are not only supported through recovery but are also assisted in rebuilding family and community relationships and accessing avenues for education, skill development, livelihood and sustainable socio-economic reintegration.
While describing the broad counters of the centre and its objectives, Principal, GMC Srinagar, Prof. (Dr.) Iffat Hassan Shah revealed that this Centre will facilitate coordination with community-level stakeholders, including ASHA workers, Self Help Groups and other frontline functionaries, thereby extending the rehabilitation process beyond institutional care and creating a stronger community-based support system.
Moreover she gave out that the framework envisages creating a pool of trained Medical Officers/Psychiatrists, Counsellors and Social Welfare Officials/Case Managers working in a coordinated manner besides focusing on the capacity-building in screening, assessment and referral, counselling, family engagement, case management, relapse-risk identification and ethical handling of beneficiaries.
The Centre will, accordingly, function as an important link between clinical care and community-based rehabilitation, with greater emphasis on continuity of support after treatment and reducing the risk of relapse and social exclusion.
The scheme also embeds in itself the strengthening of addiction psychiatry capacity in J&K through collaboration with the National Drug De-addiction & Treatment Centre (NDDTC), AIIMS New Delhi, including structured training, mentoring, observerships and joint research in addiction psychiatry, opioid agonist treatment, dual-diagnosis management and evaluation of rehabilitation interventions.
The initiative reflects the supportof Central government to the UT Administration’s to adopt a people-centric, coordinated and recovery-oriented approach to substance abuse, recognising that sustainable rehabilitation requires not only medical intervention but also family support, social acceptance, skills, livelihood opportunities and continued follow-up.
With IMHANS Srinagar emerging as a key institutional anchor for the pilot, the Centre is expected to provide a structured pathway for beneficiaries from treatment and stabilisation to rehabilitation, reintegration and restoration of productive lives.