By NurFazliyana
GOMBAK, 16 October 2018: Mental Health Awareness Training (MHAT’18) on the theme “Young People and Mental Health in a Changing World”, with the aim to spread awareness of mental health issues, as well as to educate the participants on how to respond to those in need of support, attracted some 40 participants.
The programme was held at Seminar Room of Kulliyyah of Human Sciences from 8.30am to 5pm on Friday (12 October).
Asst. Prof. Dr. Jamilah Hanum of the Department of Psychology and a clinical psychologist, Miss Nur Fariha, who is the founder and managing director of 1Moment4Them, were invited to the programme.
The most interesting activity during the training was the group assignment where participants need to identify some information regarding the person who committed suicide based on the suicidal assessment video.
The information that the participants needed to find out was the questions asked by the counsellor to the person who committed suicide, the reaction of the counsellor towards the person’s answers, and the theme of the person’s answers.
From the activity, the participants were able to identify the information needed in order to know whether a person is depressed. They also learned how to help those people who are in need of support.
According to Dr. Jamilah, a person who is facing a crisis, is one who thinks, plans, or attempts suicide or the person may be involved in a non-suicidal self-injurious behaviour. She said normally, people cut their hand but they do not want to die. “It is because they just want to relieve certain anger in them.”
In an interview with one of the participants of the training session, she said that she just knew the exact way to reach out to people with depression “because Dr. Jamilah had provided us with a lot of information regarding depression”. ***