Patients Helping Hands is an NGO which is run solely and entirely by the students of Sindh Medical College. It was founded on May 23rd 2011 with the aim to provide better healthcare facilities and free life-saving drugs to the less-fortunate patients visiting Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, National Institute of Child Health and National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases.
THE PLAN:
The idea to hold a mental health awareness conference was put forward by Simra Siddiqui (Interim Director Marketing and Creative Department) aimed at spreading awareness regarding mental health and eradicating the stigma associated with mental illnesses. The audience for the event consisted of the students of Sindh Medical College. Our team for this event comprised of the following members: Simra Siddiqui, Arub Yousuf, Talbia Binte Humayun, Laraib Zafar, Nabeeha Essam, Zainab Nisar, Namra Farooqui, Faryal Zehra, Pireh Khatri, Ali Asgher Shah, Sumayya Noor, Areeba Sultan, Maira Ali, Rimsha Younus, Aryba Jawaid, Sidra Naseem, Huzaifa Usman, Manoj Kumar, Simra Shahid, Hasan Alvi and Faaiz Malik.
Our basic plan was to address the increasing incidence of mental illnesses across the globe, particularly focusing on the state of mental health in Pakistan, and to increase awareness regarding seeking help from professionals when faced with mental health challenges. For this accord, we approached several renowned psychiatrists and psychologists to appear in our event and give brief presentations on the scope of mental health in their respective fields. Celebrities were also approached so that they may entertain the audience and also share their life stories and the mental health challenges they had to face whilst growing up.
The conference was held on the 23rd May, Saturday at Jinnah Sindh Medical University, starting at 9 am and ended at 1 pm. Refreshment boxes were distributed at the end of the conference to all the participants and guest speakers, letters of acknowledgment were given to all the guest speakers by the president of Patients’ Helping Hands, Dr Islam Ahmed, and certificates of participation were given to all the medical students who appeared as audience for the event.
Student Registrations:
Registrations for the event were conducted by Areeba Sultan and Sumaiyya Noor and these registrations went on for 5 days. Members as well as students were registered for a fee of Rs. 150 on first come first serve basis. 310 registrations were made altogether.
Facebook Publicity:
All the members of the marketing and creative department were assigned to look after Facebook publicity of the event via sharing the event details to their friends. The Hash tag #TimeToTalk was used.
An event page was created under the name of “Mental Health Awareness Week.” Several Posters were designed by the Creative department of PHH and spread by all the members on Facebook to increase the publicity even further over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Sponsors for the Event:
Lundbeck pharmaceuticals, approached by Simra Siddiqui, were the official sponsors for the event. They leant Rs. 15,000 to the cause.
Time of the conference: 9am-1pm
Host: Ayesha Jamal and Syeda Ramsha Akhlaq
[junkie-alert style=”white”] Guest Speakers [/junkie-alert]
Dr. Iqbal Afridi – Head of Neuropsychiatry at JPMC (Stress and anxiety in young adults)
Dr. Zafar Haider – Consultant Psychiatrist at JPMC (Depression)
Dr. Sumaiyya Syed Tariq – Senior Medico-Legal Officer and Police Surgeon at Civil Hospital Karachi (Forensic Psychiatry in Theory and practice, and Bipolar disorders – A patient’s perspective)
Dr Irfan Ashraf – Senior Registrar Jinnah Sindh Medical University (Awareness and incidence of depression amongst students of JSMU)
Mr. Junaid Akram – Standup Comedian and Social Commentator (Personal experience)
Mr. Zohair Allibhoy – Motivational Speaker, Trainer (Motivational Session)
Mr. Ali Gul Pir – Singer, Actor, Writer (Personal experience)
[junkie-alert style=”white”] Chief Guest [/junkie-alert]
Dr Iqbal Afridi (H.O.D Psychiatry and neurology at JPMC, secretary faculty of Psychiatry CPSP, Director of research Karachi Psychiatry and Addiction hospital, Visiting consultant National Medical Centre, Project director NARC project)
Lundbeck pharmaceuticals were official sponsors for the event. This session was followed by a Lundbeck pharmaceuticals commercial video.
The program started at 9 am sharp with a few verses from Holy Quran recited by Muhammad Fasih Mansoori. All the guest speakers and student audience arrived on time.
This was followed by a thorough and enlightening presentation given by Dr Zafar Haider on depression. He talked about various statistics encompassing mental illnesses and factors predisposing to depression.
Following this, a video was played highlighting the progress of PHH so far. It showed the progress made at JPMC with regards to construction of various ICUs and free drugs given out to patients at NICH.
Dr Irfan Ashraf, registrar JSMU, presented his paper on the awareness and incidence of depression amongst students of SMC and his paper compared the knowledge of mental illnesses and likelihood of depression among male and female students at SMC.
Following this, Dr Sumaiyya Tariq gave a brief account of her own experiences in the field of forensic psychiatry. She spoke of the various cases she had come across in the span of her career so far and expressed her views on Bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety and how these should be immediately dealt with. She also spoke of her personal struggle with Bipolar disorder.
This was followed by a motivational speech delivered by Zohair Allibhoy. The audience was greatly intrigued during his session which ended with an uproar of laughter and applause.
Following this, Dr Iqbal Afridi presented his views on stress and anxiety among young adults and management of these two conditions. His talk was very captivating and the audience was greatly satisfied with the knowledge they received from his presentation.
The event was concluded by personal experiences and real life incidents shared by Ali Gul Pir, Junaid Akram and Dr Islam Ahmed (President, Patients Helping Hands), which again intrigued the audience to a great degree and ended up in amazing feedback.
All in all, the event was a huge success and our audience and guest speakers left us with amazing remarks.
Patients’ Helping Hands looks forward to organizing many such events in the future as well.
[junkie-alert style=”white”]Project Report prepared by Nabeeha Essam [/junkie-alert]