Depression and other mental illnesses are still considered a taboo around the world even up to now. Though some countries are already starting to embrace its reality, other countries like China are still hesitant to dig deeper regarding the issue.
Given this reason, no matter how hard they are already going through, most people facing mental illness still decide to keep their mouth shut scared of getting out of their box to seek help, according to The Guardian.
With the alarming rate of depressed people and teens ending their lives, a clinical psychologist in Hong Kong was inspired to give all she got to help.
"I want to make sure that a young person's first contact with mental health support isn't after they've tried to kill themselves," said Dr. Jamie Chiu, one of the Channel News Asia's Champions for Change.
Dr. Chiu's journey in battling mental illnesses started back in her high school years, where she also experienced sentiments, bullying, anxiety, depression, and sadness. She even had suicidal thoughts in her mind before.
She shared the only thing that refrained her from hurting herself that time was when she realized that what she was going through doesn't really define her. She was just like that because of illness and she only needs help.
Eventually, her mental estate inspired her to help other teenagers who are just like her especially those who are fighting their demons alone. At that moment, she decided to study psychology.
At present, Dr. Chiu, along with her fiancé Mark Altosaar, is working her best to understand more of the needs of these teens and how specifically she can help them.
She created a game called "Eat It All," where the player is asked to feed the game's character. Through the game, the player's cognitive patterns are measured, which is one of the things that are altered whenever a person become depressed.
Aside from that Dr. Chiu is also adamant about reaching out to these teens, which she was able to do by using a mental health screening program called "Know My Students."
The program is used to measure the student's mental health and also to help the school's administration to monitor and support their students' emotional estate.
A lot of schools in and out of Hong Kong are already interested to adopt the "Know My Students" program for their school, with the goal of reaching to their students more and become more aware of the problems that are happening inside their campus, which could affect their student's emotional and mental health.
With all of the things she has already contributed to help people who are battling mental illnesses, Dr. Chiu added, what's more important is not just to inspire these people to move forward and seek for help, but to teach other people around them how to properly extend their help and reach out to their loved ones.
