Seminar on Mental Health Awareness

The Seminar began with the introduction about the Resource Person by the moderator Chongti Khimn, Asst. Professor. She has also briefly highlighted the need and importance of organizing such event on mental health and balancing our workplace particularly teachers from Higher Education.

The Resource Person stressed on the importance of mental health particularly in the work place through the following points:

• ·  To be physically healthy, one must be first mentally healthy.
• · According to National Mental Health Survey, approximately 474 million persons are working in India, out of which about 150 million people are suffering from one or the other mental illness.
• ·  Too much stress and mental illness distracts a person to the focus in the workplace which also strains and have a negative impact on our relationships beyond workplace- viz family, friends, etc.
• ·  According to the Resource Person, mental health issues increased abnormally during the Covid-19 pandemic particularly due to financial constraints. And India was one among the highest in 18^th countries with about 63% to be affected by mental health problems.
• ·  One of the key steps is to create a positive environment in the working place. To care for colleagues, staffs, being supportive to each other. Talk about and share the problems to your colleagues instead of pressing things/issues inside one’s mind/heart which might rather go on to create more problems/social distancing/isolation from the colleagues in the workplace.
• ·  She also emphasized that one should not be judgmental while people come sharing their problems as everyone in the workplace has different attitude, character, upbringing etc. Therefore, one should learn to appreciate each other in the workplace. Taking care of small issues rather than ignoring them as small insignificant issues will go a long way in balancing work and mental health.
• ·   She also suggested the idea of having/creating a “Mental Health Wellness Club” in the workplace.

The session concluded with a productive discussion, interactive session amongst the participants and resource person. Altogether there were seventeen (17) participants along with the resource person who have attended the seminar.