KAMPAR: Are we truly aware the shadow of depression and anxiety in our daily life?

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Organized by a group of third year third semester psychology students, Mental Health Awareness Exhibition was held to raise the awareness of UTAR students on the mental health issues.

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“We hope that through this exhibition, UTAR students will understand more about mental illness and encourage those who facing the problem to come forward and seek for help from the professionals,” said the chairperson of the exhibition Lim Chean Wei.

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Lim highlighted that there were 20 booths featured in the exhibition, to provide different activities for the visitors to try on.

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Explanation booths available for the visitors to understand more about the mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), committees at the booth were seen explained to the visitors diligently about the symptoms of the mental illnesses and what the professionals would do to help the patients.

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Besides explanation booths, visitors could also took mental health screenings to found out their stress level, committees would then provided suggestions for the participants regarding how to reduce stress.

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Interesting activities such as anxiety mysterious box and clay technique had attracted many participants to try on.

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Clay technique is one of the psychological self-help methods commonly used in dealing with individuals with anxiety disorders, individuals with difficulties in expressing emotions and thoughts, as well as those whom experienced grief of loss.    

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Even though the exhibition was only held for one day, but it was estimated that more than 120 visitors had dropped by the exhibition.

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“For us the exhibition we consider it as a successful event, even though the preparation process is a bit chaotic, but fortunately it all ended well,” said Lim.

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Apart from the supports shown by students, the committees were glad that most of the psychology department lecturers also attended the exhibition, to show their supports for their students.

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“We were grateful when we saw the familiar faces to visit us, especially our psychology course lecturers,” Lim continued.

The exhibition was an assignment assigned by their lecturer for the subject called abnormal psychology.

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“Our lecturer Mr. Pheh Kai Shuen will then evaluates us according to the performance of us during the exhibition,” said Lim.