‘A State of Mind’ – Mental Health & Psychology Exhibition organised in observing World Mental Health Day 2019
‘A State of Mind’ – Mental Health and Psychology Exhibition organised by the Students’ Council of Colombo International Institute of Higher Education ( CIIHE), School of Psychology was held on the 08th, 09th and 10th of October 2019 at the their Campus in Colombo 04.
The exhibition was organised in commemoration of the World Mental Health Day. The overall objective of this exhibition was to raise awareness of mental health issues and mobilising efforts in support of mental health. Hundreds of students worked together to share knowledge and increase awareness by talking about mental health issues and what more needs to be done to make mental health care a reality for people in Sri Lanka.
More than 30 stalls on different areas in mental health and psychology were displayed and explanations and demonstrations were done by the undergraduate students in Psychology. Clinical Psychology, Counselling, Psychotherapy, Child Psychology, Biopsychology, Forensic Psychology, Cyber Psychology, Addictions, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sports Psychology, Social Psychology, Personality, Psychodynamics and Behaviourism were the themes of the main stalls.
During the three days, thousands of individuals attended the event and among them were schoolchildren, youth and adults of all age groups. Many schools had organised their students to visit the exhibition during the school hours and many more came with their parents in the evenings.
Maldivian Ambassador visited the event as the Chief Guest on the first day and many Maldivians attended the exhibition over the three days. Maldivian Students of the CIIHE students’ council promoted the event among the Sri Lankan Maldivian Community.
Some of the schools that facilitated their students to visit include St. Peter’s College, Colombo Hindu College, Spectrum College, Gateway College, Saiva Mangaiyar Vidyalayam, Amana International School, Ilma International Girls’ School, Stafford International School, Colombo South International College, Royal Institute International School and Holy Family Convent.
Visitors were highly impressed by the exhibition and especially the skills demonstrated by the students in presenting psychological concepts in a simple manner through the exhibits and being able to explain them clearly to the public. Many expressed their views via positive feedback and a common comment was “we learnt many things we didn’t know”.
Organisers were also very happy about the support received by some of the media organisations including Sunday Times who came on board as the print media partner, Kiss FM, Red FM and FOX FM who advertised the event on radio to attract more people for the event, MTV & MBC Network for providing an opportunity to two students to share information about the event on News First.