Mrs Lalitha Subramony
World Mental Health Day is commemorated every year on 10 October. This year the theme is “Emerging mentally stronger together – Strategies for a new normal.” In keeping with the theme, Club2Care was happy to present a webinar “Making Connections – Building a resilient community” on 10th October 2020.
Club2Care’s President, Dr Jayaraman Hariram, Vice-President (Well-being), Dr Nigila Ravichandran and Vice President (Clinical) Gayathri Sandrasegaran took us through Club2Care’s journey since its inception in 2017; our mental health outreach and screening programmes as well as our counselling programme. We also heard from beneficiaries of our counselling programme on how Club2Care has helped them in their mental health journey while participants of our mental health training programme described their takeaways.
This segment was followed by a panel discussion featuring Mr Anbarasu Rajendran, CEO of SINDA, Mr Geofran Thomas, Vice-chairman of Bishan IAEC, Mr Selva Anand, Director of Avant Theatre together with Club2Care volunteers, Ms Lalitha Subramony (Co-Founder of Club2Care/ Bharatanatyam dancer), Dr Arvind Rajagopal (Psychiatry Resident and Club2Care Youth wing member), Mr Vijay Pratap Rai (Peer Support Specialist and Club2Care member) and “Nandhini” (Club2Care Volunteer). The discussion centred on where we are in the mental health journey in the Indian community, what challenges we face and how we can cope with the stresses of this uncertain world to forge ahead stronger. Diverse views on how we can come together as a community were presented ; the need to synergise the efforts of various Indian organisations and grassroots groups, the role of the Arts in raising awareness of mental health amongst others. Vijay and “Nandhini” gave us insights into their own mental health journeys giving us a valuable first person perspective on how we can reach out to those facing mental health issues.
The panel was followed by a talk on stress management presented by Ms Vithiyah Muthukumar, Club2Care volunteer and Registered Clinical Psychologist who took us through some self-care strategies and gave us valuable tips on keeping mentally healthy.
All in all, we believe it was an afternoon well spent! Club2Care was grateful to all our speakers and panellists for sharing their insights and happy to have done its part to further the cause of mental health in the Singapore Indian community, this World Mental Health Month.
Contacts :
Club2Care Facebook page
Tel : 89236653 (Mon, Wed, Fri : 10am to 6pm)