Slay the dread
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Online Discussion Forum on Mental Health -Leo Club of University of Moratuwa and Centennial Leo Club of Richmond College-
The greatest wealth of life is a good health. As same as the physical health, mental health is also important and mental wellbeing is the base of a healthy and successful person. You should rise when you fall, give yourself another day. And you have to find your courage by killing the fear. It is not all about struggling alone, you can have a walk together – and drive with happiness till you meet your destination.
Depression is a common illness worldwide which is a cause for increasing the rate of suicides. The depressed people are suffering greatly and functioning poorly. In Sri Lanka University students and employees can be identified as the most defenseless group in the society towards this depreciation of the mental health. They become depressed due to a variety of reasons and the causes that affect it are personalised. There are means and ways to get rid of depression and mental stresses, and there might be many other ways that people are still unaware of. As a club which engages in many social service activities, we Leo Club of University of Moratuwa in collaboration with Centennial Leo Club of Richmond College conducted a research to discover whether there is an effect of engaging in charity works to rebuild or develop mental health.
Through 560 responses that were collected by a questionnaire which was circulated among different community groups via social media platforms, we were able to conclude that engaging in charity works as a volunteer helps in maintaining a good mental health. The summary of the quantitative research with random samples can be stated as below. 89% of the responses were from University students and the remaining is from different employees.
Questionnaire was consisted of 15 questions. First 10 questions were to check whether the responders are suffering from mental stress or depression and to that those questions were categorised, and a certain score was given. The scoring followed authentic scoring methods. According to that,
Ones who scored over 39 are suffering from depression. Accordingly, 134 people suffer from depression and 426 people do not. Other 05 questions were to find out the reasons for depression, whether they need counselling or not, what are they doing when stressed, their thought about engaging in charity work, and the last question was to check whether they are engaging in charity work. According to that,
The following is how people with and without depression engage in social work.
Thus, it was clear that it is appropriate to engage in social work to get rid of mental stress. Out of the total number of participants engaged in social work most of the time (n=171) a majority (87%) was found with no depression. Comparatively out of the participants who have not or rarely engaged in social work 61% were found to suffer from depression while 36% was without depression.
Social work is suitable not only for those who suffer from depression but also for those who do not suffer from depression. This is because these social works help to control mental disorders such as stress and anxiety, even for those who do not suffer from depression.
According to WHO, more than 26.4 million people of all ages suffer from this common mental disorder. Psychological and pharmacological treatments should be taken to cure from this but according to this research, it is obvious that engaging in charity works is a help to regain the mental health.
Our Special thanks goes to Dr. Anishka Hettiarachchi, the student consultant of University of Moratuwa for being a great strength in conducting this research.
