MENTAL HEALTH WEEK- Buddy Interaction Activity

The department of psychology and counseling and career development center, IIS (deemed to be University) Jaipur, organized and celebrated Mental Health Week from 18th October – 22nd October 2021, different activities were conducted, and one of those activities was Buddy Interaction in which students of M.A. & M.Sc. Psychology, Sem 3 interacted with the students and faculty of the university on various aspects of mental health as following:

Topic- Signs of being overwhelmed and grounding exercises.

Students- Manvee, Rajyashi and Tavishi

“We interacted with the students about the psychological concept of 'overwhelming'. With the permission of the professor, we briefed the class about mental health, its importance and the misconceptions related to it. Then, we talked about what overwhelming is, when and how it can occur, and how to cope up with it. We introduced two grounding techniques called '5-4-3-2-1 technique' and 'Breathing technique', to cope up with overwhelming. We also made them aware about what overwhelming is not, and when to seek help. They were intimidated about when, where and how to seek help and were made aware about the CCDC cell in the college. We also talked about normalising seeking help for mental health issues.”

Topic- Importance of self-care and developing a self-care menu.

Students- Arpita and Triyambika

“It was a really great experience for us. We interacted with different classes and talked about Self-care and 6 ways to practice self-care in our daily lives. We also conducted an activity where students and professors were taught to create self-care menus for themselves so that they are able to include these practices in their lives easily. Everyone enjoyed making self-care menus and each class was given a poster about self-care at the end of each session.”

Topic- Human emotions and the important ways to address our emotions.

Students- Anjani and Neha

“We interacted with the students about the importance of expressing one’s emotions and how it can help us and our relationships with others. We played a guessing game where students had to act out the emotions written on a piece of paper and the rest of the class had to interpret it. Everyone had a lot of fun and they participated happily.”

Topic- Normalising seeking help.

Students- Heena and Jyotsana

“Regarding our experience we had a very good experience as every student and teachers as well were very cooperative and also seemed to have interest regarding mental health. We talked about the importance of Mental health and how it is as important as our Physical health. Students were very responsive as when we asked questions, they all seemed very enthusiastic to answer.”

Topic- Identifying good stress vs bad stress.

Students- Kanupriya and Radhika

“Our experience was really good. We interacted mostly with the students of the English department about the identification of good and bad stress in various life situations, when and how it can occur and how to manage it. We made them aware about the various ways using which they can manage their stress levels and maintain good mental health. Some of those were to take a walk, meditate, practice mindfulness, develop a positive self-talk habit, exercising, practicing gratitude, focusing on breathing and getting enough sleep. The students responded well and engaged in the interaction with us by putting forth their experiences with daily stress and stressors and what they do to manage it.”

Topic- Importance of gratitude.

Students- Ranu, Roopal and Grisha

"We interacted with the students about what gratitude is and its importance in our life. We also conducted an activity in which we asked the students to write three things that they are grateful for. We made them aware about the various ways they can practice gratitude in their daily life such as maintaining a gratitude journal, writing a gratitude letter, living a complaint-free day, using positive affirmations, etc. The students were responsive and cooperated well. Overall, it was a very good time and experience.”

Topic- Mental Health- common myths and facts to break the stigma.

Students- Stuti, Niharika and Charu

“Our topic for interaction was 'Mental Health: Myths and facts to break the stigma'. Our buddy interaction was good, the students and teachers both were interactive. Though there were some students who didn't know much about the topic and hence were curious to know. Overall it was a good experience.”

Topic- Compassion for self and others for mental health.

Students- Swati and Yuthika

“Our topic was ‘compassion for self and others for mental health wellbeing’ which was interesting for us as well as for our interaction buddies as they were totally involved with us and they were too interested in developing a two-way conversation for the same. We emphasised on the importance of compassion for ourselves and how acknowledging our feelings and being kind to ourselves is important for our mental wellbeing. All the students were responsive and well cooperative. Overall, we had a very good time and experience with all of them.”