After preparing for a couple days before all the students arrived, the South Asian students presented on their cultures for the international students. You can read more here, and see a few student interviews here, beginning with Olga!
Monica
Mohammad
Rohini
Kultwisiso
Shilpi
We have a common name that is HUMAN but human is divided into many classes, castes, countries. Due to dividing this we get our own identity. This identity is the most prestige thing whose shows our manner and history.
Today we went in Chhara community. Chhara is the caste of 200 people . During British rule they gave them as criminal identity. Though India got independent on 15th August 1947 but they got independent till 30th August 1952. Due to known as criminal they have limited life. Neighbour community hate them because they think they are thieve, robbers and criminals. Due to this they are not getting jobs, friends, supporters in their life because nobody wants to make them friends because they can’t accept them because they don’t trust them easily. Though they didn’t have done anything, police can come in anytime and arrest them without any reason. If they try to speak they get beat and hit by them very badly. Due to their history they are still named as criminals. There are 192 tribes and 60 millions people and they are still backward from their rights and justice.
Adish brother is one who took session and last year police beat him and arrest him without any reason. His vehicle got damage by them. He got injured very badly. He is fighting for his justice form last year. Look how the political plays a role for them. I wish you won your case brother.
Today´s session I learnt that never give up and if we deserve our rights we should fight to get our justice and rights.
Here is the question if you caught by police without any reason and they blamed you as a most wanted criminal? will you accept it? Of course we will say no but these Charra people are forced to accept the criminal from the years and years.
HOUSES AND HEART OF CHHARAS ARE BEAUTIFUL BUT THE LIFE OF CHHARAS ARE NOT BEAUTIFUL.
We had a special day at the Mental Health Center at “St. Xavier” University. Yesha Kotadia – a consulting psychologist, offered her time to explain the meaning behind the terms mental health and mental illness to us.
Mental health is mandatory for living a happy life, protecting and taking responsibility for other people’s lives in India. Mental health illness may consist of bad behavior and mixed emotions. It was eye-opening to learn how mental health illness is viewed in India and how people think of it as something unreal.
Indian people have myths about mental health and illnesses and it was very interesting to see what they believe in in their community. In India, 1 in 5 people has emotional and mostly behavioral problems. In the Indian community 60 to 70 million people suffer from the basic common disorder in life – depression.
There is also a high rate of suicide because people in the community can’t take the pain of how they are being treated in life. Why must people end there life if they can ask for help? Well I know most people don’t ask for help because they are scared to show a weakness or they think they will be judged about their problems.
We also had our personal time and it was sad but mind-opening too.
Today we went to St. Xavier’s College. Today’s topic was mental health. Mental health thought by Yasha Kotodia. Whatever I expect I got it. Like I expect, what is mental health and illness? This all things I learned. I want to learn, how do we now that people are in mental illness? Which type of treatment they should take? From here I now that, which type of treatment they should take?
I mean by mental health is good behavior, good thinking, mental health, doing good things and so on. Mental illness is bad behavior, negative thoughts, different things are doing like talking a lot, eating too much, daily life changes, and so on.
We learned that in India people think that mental illness are not real illness. They are not giving facilities to them. They refuse and saying that they will come by their self from illness. Lots of mental illness people are in India but not treatment. No body are taking psychology subject. People are going in mental illness because of stress and lots of pressure. People are not taking help from someone because they feel same.
We need to do drama based on a real story. Other group need to observe who is in illness and how he went in ill? Who help him? That story Yasha told to everybody. At the end of he got treatment and medicine, now he is good and going to do work.
We all need to think one thing which had happen with us, we never share with anybody. All thought and shared. While sharing all were crying because it was painful for us and it was heard to share in a group.
After sharing all our personal things, we need relax. So we started to do power nap, because of this many people feel good and relax. At the end we all got a pebbles to write a message to lowing it on the roads to make someone’s day good.
The session was good because I learned about mental health. I learned that in India there is lack of mental doctors and what we can do in mental illness? We should make happier day for everybody. I feel very happy after the session because I want know about mental health and I learned. New things I learned from the session are in India there is lack of treatment for mental illness, we should make happy day for everybody. The session was amazing. I am very happy that I am in this program.