ITBP Head Constable Education and Stress Counsellor Syllabus 2026

The Head Constable (Education and Stress Counsellor) written paper is the only stage that carries marks. Posts, age, height and the fee are on the recruitment page. This page is the paper itself: how the 100 marks are split, what each psychology block is asking, and how the qualifying mark works when there is no negative marking.

ITBP has not issued a textbook or a previous paper for this 2026 notice. The five psychology headings and their marks are printed in the notice. The notes under each heading are the standard undergraduate topics those headings cover. Treat them as the revision map, and check the notice again if ITBP later uploads a finer syllabus.

Written paper

The test is objective. ITBP will decide whether the answer sheet is OMR or a computer. Mobile phones and calculators are treated as unfair means even if they are switched off. The answer key goes up on recruitment.itbpolice.nic.in after the exam. There is no re-evaluation.

Time is 2 hours. That is 72 seconds a question if you move evenly. The psychology block is 60 of the 100 marks, so a plan that spends half the paper on English and arithmetic is spending time on 20 marks and starving 60. A workable split is about 70 minutes on psychology, and the remaining 50 minutes on the four short sections, with a few minutes to transfer answers if the paper is on OMR.

You need 35 marks out of 100 if you are UR, EWS or an ex-serviceman, and 33 marks if you are SC, ST or OBC (NCL). Because a wrong answer does not cost a mark, an unanswered question and a wrong answer are the same: both score zero. Guessing when you can remove one option is rational on this paper. It is not rational on a paper that has negative marking. Do not import the SSC habit here.

Psychology, 60 marks

The notice splits the 60 marks like this.

Psychopathology and counselling are 30 marks together. A candidate who prepared only definitions of psychology, and skipped disorders and the counselling relationship, has left the largest block untouched.

General psychology, intelligence, creativity, problem solving

Start with the definition you can say in one line: psychology studies behaviour and mental processes. Then the methods: observation, case study, survey, and experiment, and why an experiment uses a control. Schools of thought that still appear in Indian degree papers are structuralism, functionalism, behaviourism, psychoanalysis and the humanistic approach. You do not need a history essay. You need to match a name to an idea. Watson and Skinner sit with behaviour. Freud sits with the unconscious. Rogers and Maslow sit with the humanistic school.

Learning is two stories. Classical conditioning is Pavlov: a neutral stimulus, after pairing, produces the response that food produced. The words to keep straight are unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus, and extinction when the pairing stops. Operant conditioning is Skinner: behaviour changes because of what follows it. Reinforcement makes it more likely. Punishment makes it less likely. A negative reinforcement is the removal of something unpleasant, and it still increases the behaviour. Candidates lose this item by treating "negative" as punishment.

Memory is encoding, storage and retrieval. Short-term memory is brief and small. Miller's figure, about seven chunks, is the number to remember, and chunking is the way a longer list is held. Long-term memory splits, in the usual textbook, into episodic, semantic and procedural. Forgetting is explained by decay, by interference from other learning, and by failure to retrieve. A cue that was present at learning helps retrieval. That is enough for a 10-mark block.

Intelligence items use the early ratio: mental age divided by chronological age, multiplied by 100. Spearman is the general factor, g, plus specific factors. Gardner is multiple intelligences. Creativity items contrast convergent thinking, one correct answer, with divergent thinking, many possible answers. Problem solving moves from defining the problem, to generating options, to testing them. A mental set is the habit of using a solution that worked before, even when it no longer fits. Functional fixedness is seeing an object only in its usual use.

Personality, attitude, prejudice, group dynamics

Personality theories to be able to name: Freud's id, ego and superego; the trait approach, Allport and the later Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism); the humanistic approach. Defence mechanisms are short questions. Repression keeps a painful memory out of awareness. Projection puts your own impulse onto someone else. Rationalisation invents an acceptable reason. Denial refuses the fact. Sublimation turns the impulse into accepted work. Displacement moves the feeling onto a safer target.

An attitude has a belief, a feeling and a tendency to act. Prejudice is an attitude against a group, formed before you know the person. A stereotype is the over-simple belief about the group. Discrimination is the behaviour. The syllabus prints all three words because the paper likes the distinction. Stereotypes can be reduced by real contact on equal terms, which is Allport's contact idea, taught in every Indian social-psychology unit.

Group dynamics is the life of a small group: roles, norms, cohesion, and what happens to judgement. Social facilitation is performing better on a simple task when others are present. Social loafing is putting in less effort because the group hides the individual. Conformity is Asch. Obedience is Milgram. Groupthink, Janis, is a cohesive group that stops questioning a poor plan. In a force, this block is not abstract. A counsellor who cannot see group pressure will misread a jawan who is afraid to disagree.

Psychopathology

This is 15 marks, the joint-largest block. Classification first. The World Health Organization system is the International Classification of Diseases. The American Psychiatric Association system is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Indian teaching hospitals use both names. You should know which institution publishes which book, and that a diagnosis is a pattern over time, not one bad day.

Anxiety disorders: generalised anxiety, panic, and phobia, which is fear tied to a specific object or situation. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an intrusion the person does not want, followed by a ritual that briefly reduces the anxiety. Mood disorders: a depressive episode is low mood, loss of interest, sleep and appetite change, and worthlessness, lasting weeks. Bipolar disorder adds a manic episode, with elevated mood, less need for sleep, and risky activity.

Schizophrenia items turn on reality testing. A delusion is a fixed false belief. A hallucination is a perception without a stimulus. Hearing voices that comment on one's actions is the textbook hallucination. Negative symptoms are flattening of emotion, poverty of speech, and withdrawal. The counsellor's job on this paper, and later in the unit, is recognition and referral, not prescribing.

Stress-related and somatic presentations matter for this post. Selye's general adaptation syndrome is alarm, resistance, exhaustion. Post-traumatic stress follows a terrifying event and returns as intrusive memories, avoidance, and hyper-arousal. Know the difference between a normal grief reaction and a depressive episode that is not lifting. Substance use: tolerance is needing more for the same effect, withdrawal is the illness that follows stopping, dependence is the cluster of both plus continued use despite harm.

Causes are asked as models. The biological model cites genes, neurotransmitters and brain injury. The psychological model cites learning and thinking habits. The social model cites isolation, poverty and the unit climate. A modern answer usually says all three interact. Suicide risk is asked as warning signs: talking about death, giving things away, a sudden calm after deep depression, and access to a method. The response in the option list is to stay with the person and get medical help, not to promise secrecy.

Counselling psychology

Another 15 marks. Stages you should be able to order: opening and rapport, exploring the problem, understanding it with the client, choosing an action, and closing with a follow-up. The qualities Rogers named are unconditional positive regard, empathy and genuineness. Empathy is understanding the client's frame. Sympathy is feeling sorry. Papers swap them.

Skills: attending, open questions, reflection of feeling, paraphrase of content, and summarising. An open question cannot be answered with yes or no. Advice given in the first five minutes, before the story is heard, is the error the paper is built to catch. Silence, used briefly, lets the client continue. Silence used because the counsellor is lost is not a skill.

Ethics: consent, confidentiality, and the limits of confidentiality. You tell the client at the start that risk of serious harm to himself or to another person, or a legal duty, will be shared with the people who must act. Records are factual. They do not carry the counsellor's insult or a guess written as a fact. Competence: you do not treat a disorder you are not trained for. You refer. Dual relationships, counselling a close friend or a person you command, distort the work.

The education half of the post sits here too. A counselling session with a child, or with a jawan who left school early, uses simpler language, shorter meetings, and a check that the person has understood. Behaviour that is dangerous is reported. Behaviour that is only unpopular is not turned into a diagnosis.

Managing human resources

Ten marks, and the most "office" block on a psychology paper. Job analysis describes tasks and the knowledge, skill and ability they need. Recruitment is attracting people. Selection is choosing among them. Training is teaching the person to do the job. Performance appraisal is judging how the work went, against the job analysis, not against how much you like the person.

Motivation theories that fit in ten marks: Maslow's hierarchy, physiological needs first; Herzberg's split between hygiene factors, which prevent dissatisfaction, and motivators such as the work itself. Leadership styles: autocratic, democratic, laissez-faire. Communication in an organisation fails when the message is vague, when the channel is wrong, or when the listener is afraid to say he has not understood. Grievance handling is a procedure with a time limit, not a favour.

For this force, the human-resource questions are likely to be plain: what a counsellor reports, what stays in the room, how a training need is spotted, how a group conflict is heard before it is judged. Revise the words, then practise saying them in one sentence. The practice set is built on these headings.

The other 40 marks

General English is 10 marks. Expect a synonym, an antonym, a spelling, a short grammar point, and a sentence that tests tense or a preposition. The vocabulary leans toward the job: counsel, stress, empathy, confidential. You do not need a literature paper.

General Hindi is 10 marks. पर्याय, विलोम, वर्तनी and a short वाक्य. Words around the work help: परामर्श, तनाव, शिक्षा, गोपनीयता. The paper is bilingual in the other sections, so Hindi is not only this block. Reading the psychology questions in Hindi, if that is your stronger language, is allowed by the way the notice describes them.

General awareness is 10 marks and bilingual. For an education post, keep Article 21A and the age band 6 to 14, the difference between a fundamental right and a directive principle, and a short India-and-neighbour map. ITBP was raised on 24 October 1962 and works on the Himalayan border. Ten questions cannot cover a year of current affairs. A thin, accurate set beats a thick pile of undated PDFs.

Quantitative aptitude and simple reasoning is 10 marks, bilingual, and the notice calls it simple. Percentage, average, ratio, simple interest, time and distance, a number series, a short coding item, and a direction or blood-relation item in one line. No calculator. If a question will take four minutes, mark a guess and move. Those four minutes are three psychology questions.

Qualifying marks and merit

Merit lists are separate for UR, SC, ST, OBC (NCL), EWS and ex-servicemen, and they use the written marks only. A reserved candidate who clears the unreserved standard on his own marks is placed on the unreserved list. There is no reserve list. If two candidates have the same marks, the older one is placed higher. If the date of birth is also the same, the name that comes first in English alphabetical order is placed higher.

The number called for document verification and the medical examination is the number of vacancies, increased by the force's past failure rate at the medical stage. The notice does not print that multiplier. Do not trust a blog that invents one.

What does not carry marks

The race, the jumps and the height measurement are qualifying. Failing one event removes you before the paper. Clearing them adds nothing to the merit. Ex-servicemen skip the physical efficiency test and still take the height and chest test, the paper and the medical examination.

The medical examination is fit or unfit. A review, if you consent within 24 hours, can change unfit to fit. It does not add marks. Original documents are checked before the medical examination. A missing degree or a category certificate in the wrong format ends the candidature at that desk.

Read the recruitment page for the race times, the height table and the fee, and use the practice set to see whether the psychology headings are actually in your recall, not only in a highlighted book.