Medical Wing of Pakistan Association Dubai organizes workshop on mental health awareness

Pakistan Association Dubai (PAD) has been organising a wide range of awareness and training workshops in a bid to provide more benefits in everyday life to its community members.

Recently the Medical Wing of the PAD organised a mental Health Awareness Workshop in collaboration with Pulse Therapy and Learning Centre in its premises to highlight various aspects of mental health and how to identify the signs of disorders.

“There is no second suggestion that the mental health is as important as physical and we have to take care of both fronts to live and enjoy a healthy and meaningful life,” said Ira Naeem, clinical psychologist at the Pulse Therapy and Learning Centre while initiating the workshop.

PAD will continue to arrange awareness workshops, specifically to children and adults, and discuss mental health in detail.

On the sidelines of the workshop, Ira Naeem told The Gulf Today that the initiative to organise a series of workshops on mental health awareness in collaboration with the Pulse Therapy and PAD was part of the activities lined up as ‘Year of the Zayed’ to highlight that the mental health is the basic right of each individual of our community.

“The agenda of this project is to spread awareness about the paediatric and adult mental health. We will be covering different topics including identification and management of psychiatric disorders, self-harm, and suicide prevention. Each month there will be two to three awareness sessions,” she said.

Shedding lighting on the mental health importance, she said that mental health can affect how individuals think and feel about themselves and others, and how they interpret different events. “Mental health also has a strong impact on an individual’s physical health because the way we think and feel has a large influence upon our physical health,” she added.

The first session received a good response from the community as the participants appreciated that the association with experts came forward to discuss this big challenge. “The workshop was fruitful in terms of attendance, interaction and the feedback was amazing. Participants want to continue to attend further workshops to get more benefits for themselves as well as understand the problems around them and solve such situations with good knowledge,” she said.

Responding to a question related to the precautionary measures to take care of mental health, she said there are a few basic ways to look after mental health like talk about your feelings, keep active, eat well, keep in touch with friends and loved ones, do something you are good at, accept who you are and most important show kindness to others.

The event was attended by a large number of female members of the community who participated in various activities throughout the interactive session.