Light Up

So I went to this Light Up event. Knew about it from this lady Anis K., whom I followed on Twiddar since she recited a poem of hers during the GilaKata event last...august, I think? Sometime before I started housemanship. It was held by Befrienders KL, a NGO who are working hard to help those who are depressed and mentally unwell. They have a helpline for people to reach out. I'm always interested in what they do, so I decided to spend my precious non working day attending this event.

The attendance aren't really great. I think around 20 (or less? I dunno) ppl showed up, but hey, that's a good start. I couldn't make it to the morning session. I came for the evening session, where a counselor from UPM held a workshop to detox our stress. I was hoping for some letting out session but instead they gave us crayons and drawing paper, asking us to portray our happy, sad and angry thoughts. It was therapeutic nonetheless, but I still want to talk to somebody haha. Actually a good thing too cz I might end up crying lol if it involved talking..but yeah some of the steam went off alright. Followed by a laidback forum session where one of the panels was a Borderline Personality Disorder survivor. I don't know if the word survivor fitted her honestly, cz she's still on meds and follow ups, but she is a positive thinker, and I guess that's good. It provides a good insight on what people like her are going through. I, on the other hand, am diagnosing myself with depression lels. One panel is a psychologist from HKL. I asked her if there's any way for us housemen to reach out for help without going to MO for referral, because, even amongst us doctors the stigma is high. Eventually, people are going to know that u went to a psychiatrist and your MO referred you, and they wont trust you to treat patients even after ure okay, and that's a really sad situation and discouragement for people who underwent all that. People were surprised, one because most of them thot i was a uni student and second because they never thot the stigma is there even in the medical community. Apparently we don't need referrals in the first place for staffs. I should clarify this later because yeah sometimes I also wanted counselling, not to the extent that I want meds but just someone to talk to about controlling my emotions. Hashtag midlifecrisis lol.

Overall I think it's very enlightening and they gave out flyers to stop verbal abuse for mental health and shiz. I'm deffo gonna tampal it around my ward and stop myself from the temptation to shove the pamphlet into some ppl's faces. Lels.

It's still a long journey for Malaysia to be mentally ill-supportive, but events liddis made me feel like it's going somewhere and it's gonna get better InshaAllah in the future.

Awesome day indeed. Worth the frightening car parking experience at Maju Tower. 😂