“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more unashamed conversation.”
Glenn Close.
When we have a headache or a bodyache, we do not think twice before consulting a doctor but when we have signs of anxiety, stress or depression, we avoid talking to a psychologist due to the stigma attached around mental health.
Vandita Tewari, a psychologist, and Akshita Suri, a special educator, believe in the importance of removing this stigma and to do that, they have started their online page on instagram (v_heal_2020) and facebook (V Heal) to help those in distress.
While Vandita has done her masters in Applied Psychology and has also done various courses in counselling and guidance, Akshita has done B.Ed in Special Education and is currently pursuing her masters. They both together believe in each other as a strong force, which together can help increase the importance of mental health.
When asked about what is their modus operandi, they told about their individual as well as group counselling special education sessions through hand on training workshops.
“The idea of starting an online platform for mental awareness came during the lockdown, when corona had hit the country badly and we realised that people need help. Many people were trying to make money out of it and this thing didn’t go well with us as there are people who cannot afford a huge amount for mental therapy. We started this page to create awareness, we do a lot of live sessions so that people who do not want to approach a psychologist or a special educator can help themselves on their own.” said Vandita.
When asked about the main aim of the work they do, Akshita replied “Main motto of our page is self-empowerment. We want people to have self awareness and hence we cover a lot of topics like how to have tough conversations, how to save our energy, how to be more peaceful, and a lot more.”
On asking about the various challenges they face, they both agreed on the point that there is stigma attached to mental health. They believe in the fact that disorder can be prevented if there is proper awareness and prevention, and thus their order of treatment follows awareness, prevention, identification and then if required intervention. “Psychotherapy takes sometime, it doesn’t work on short term basis. Usually people who came for help used to feel better after one session and discontinued, but then they used to come back after a few months. We have to find the deep root cause of the problem and work on that.” stressed the duo.
“Negativity does pull us down sometimes, but the best thing is that we are two, and when one feels low the other one motivates her. We keep on sharing different strategies with people and this in turn has also helped us. The positive feedbacks that we get from our workshops, webinars etc provide us a push.” Added the ladies.
Even though their family is not from the same educational background but they try to understand their work and is very supportive. “Many of our friends and family members check our posts and they are sometimes able to relate to them. They also come up with some topics that they want us to discuss about.”
Mental health is real. Stress is real.
It is high time that it is not considered to be a taboo topic anymore!
How do people contact them ?
“People can message us anytime and we try to respond as soon as possible. They can reach out to us on our insta or fb page , we have provided our e.mail as well as phone number.”
e.mail i.d : vheal94@gmail.com
Contact No. : 09650733902
Instagram link : https://instagram.com/v_heal_2020
Facebook link : https://m.facebook.com/2183260648388923/
Authored By: Nasiha Nisar
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