Forum on mental health awareness

By Hanis Humaira

GOMBAK, 22 October 2014: The Mental Health Awareness Month 2014 under the theme, ‘Total Wellness in Mental Health’, was held at the Kuliyyah of Education, IIUM, here recently.

The event was successfully organised by final year students, BED Guidance & Counselling in collaboration with Persatuan Kaunseling Malaysia (PERKAMA).

The main activities carried out during the event were forum, tea talk with caregivers of family members of individuals with schizophrenia, stress management support group, and a movie show, ‘Beautiful Mind’.

A forum was held with the theme, ‘Schizophrenia, what public should know’ by a consultant psychiatrist of Hospital Tengku Ampuan Rahimah Klang, from Islamic perspective.

The forum was presented by Professor Dr. Malik Badri, holder of the Chair of Ibn Khaldun, KIRKHS, IIUM. Other than that, a forum on living with schizophrenia which was held on 16 October 2014 was also part of the mental health awareness programme.

The forum managed to get good response from the audience throughout the session.  One of the committee members, Siti Nur Syahirah, a final year student said she was really happy and satisfied with the event.

“I feel so happy and satisfied. For me, it was successful because many students and lecturers came and it was full house. Alhamdulillah, we also received good feedback from them. I hope the programme like this will be continued as it gave benefits and knowledge for the people,” she said.

Meanwhile, booths displaying exhibitions of psycho-educational posters and pamphlets were also set up during that event.

The organiser has come out with counters for stress screening and play therapy as tools to overcome stress such as bibliotherapy which is the use of selected reading materials as therapeutic adjuvants in medicine and psychiatry; also provided guidance in the solution of personal problems through directed reading. Other activity means provided to defeat stress were sand tray, art therapy, clay and play-dough as well as puppetry.

Nurul Qhairunnisa Nam Nazri, a participant of the event, expressed her personal view towards the activities. She said: “This kind of programme is good as it gave me a chance to have a broader understanding of schizophrenia. I bet, most people have heard about it but so few people know about it.”

“This kind of event can be a good platform for students to get themselves exposed to knowledge about schizophrenia. They will get better understanding by directly asking questions to the speaker and getting feedback straight away,” she added.

The programme manager, Norlina Abdul Aziz regarded the activities as successful and hope this programme could be turned into an annual programme for all people in educational psychology and counselling community that would provide benefits and services for IIUM community as a whole.

“I hope this time the programme can be a starting point for introducing counselling services as one of the support systems and helping toward professional community,” she added.

Photos by Nor Aishah Yacob

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