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Class reflection

Feb 8th
Steeven Toor

Todays class started off with the student seminar presented by Shyrose and
Hilton. They were focusing on the topic of mental health and I thought that
they did a wonderful job on the topic, especially with their interactive group
activity. I also mentioned this in my peer review, but I really enjoyed how
interactive they were with there presentation, it really kept me focused and
engaged with the topic at hand. Also, I thought the addition of making the
group activity competitive was really interesting, but it made sense when we
had to pitch our ideas to our instructors who would make a decision on
behalf of Bill and Melinda Gates. I actually really liked this idea because it
grounded the activity into a very real and practical sense where in real life,
there are limited resources and funding and not all projects and initiatives
will get funded. Having the two initiatives in two completely different
locations though made me think if such program/initiatives/interventions
would have been applying for the same grant/funding opportunity.
Regardless it was still a neat idea that got us thinking into how we can pitch
our idea realistically to our instructors where we would get the funding over
the other team. Our country where we were going to be implementing
mental health intervention was Uganda. Our initial steps as a group was to
be very mindful of the culture and local citizens that actually live in Uganda. I
thought this was a smart move because it would have showed our investors
that we have thought out our plan well and have a long-term and sustainable
idea in mind. We had also included ideas such as having community
members and leaders involved with our intervention that would help create a
more comprehensive approach. I thought this was important because it
would be ignorant to assume that you understand the mental health issues
that the Uganda community is facing. The people who will understand these
mental health issues the most will be the community members and leaders
themselves who have firsthand maybe have seen some of these mental
health issues take place. An aha moment for me that came from todays class
was from the ted talk shown towards the end of the seminar that had
mentioned that mental illness is amongst the leading cause of disability and
totals about 15% of global disease (I also have roughly 50% of these cases
dont receive treatment which creates this treatment gap, I found this
astonishing and a clear cut display of how much mental health is neglected).
Furthermore, the ted talk speaker Vikram Patel actually mentioned how when
he went to India, it is a world where there are very few health professionals,
if not at all, that focus on mental health. This made me think of my own
personal community and how much mental health is neglected in the Punjabi
community. After this connection it made sense how in a country like India,
there would be very little to none help provided to people facing mental
health issues. Many times in my community, mental health illnesses such as
chronic depression or bi-polar disorder are not even considered an illness. If
you have bi-polar for example, and you are facing a period of extreme low,
you are considered to just be lazy and just dont want to get up and work and
making excuses. This type of attitude towards mental health can be very
detrimental because it can cause further harm to these individuals who are
facing mental health issues. I think this type of awareness would help start
some steps in the right direction with either having increased education and
positive dialogues on how we can work together in tackling mental health
issues (collaboratively with the community).

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