Ruhbaru goes to Sukkur and Khairpur

The year 2020 started off with a pandemic that shook the whole world to the core, many people lost their loved ones, and many are still dealing with the loss that came along with it. With all these unfortunate events, people’s mental health was tested and tried to a great extent. While people in Urban areas are and have been privileged enough to get therapies, people from Rural areas were left with no such advantages.

Therefore, to cater to their needs, and give them a helping hand Ruhbaru took on a challenge to go beyond and conducted two Ruhtalks on 28th December in Sukkur And Khairpur. The sessions were conducted online by the Project Associate, Mahnoor Shah during a Humqadam graduation ceremony, where she educated the beneficiaries about prevalent mental health issues, how to identify them and how to deal with them. The beneficiaries were provided with a baseline survey that comprised of 15 and 18 questions respectively, a total of 18 beneficiaries from Sukkur and 16 beneficiaries from Khairpur attended the session

The Ruhtalk was initiated by asking beneficiaries to do a ‘Mental Health Check-In’, Mahnoor Shah gave a brief introduction about what mental health is and how we can identify common mental health issues. She educated the beneficiaries about common mental health illnesses i.e., Anxiety, Depression, General Anxiety Disorder, Anger Issues, Schizophrenia etc

Keeping in mind that the session was taking place in Rural Sindh, the primary language for the session was Urdu with a hint of Sindhi. The material presented was mostly visual that managed to capture the attention of the beneficiaries

Moreover, the beneficiaries were encouraged to talk about their mental health and seek help if they identify any symptom in themselves or in someone in their surroundings. The beneficiaries were also provided with Ruhbaru’s social media platform and number that can be used to reach Ruhbaru

The overall session was very informative and beneficiaries from both Sukkur and Khairpur were happy to have attended the sessions and they encouraged the people from Ruhbaru to conduct such sessions more often