10 Reasons You Might Need to See a Psychiatrist

We thought this podcast from the Dr Julz show, featuring Psychiatrist Dr Ayomide Adebayo would be great to share with our readers

More info at: http://radio.drjulz.com

How To Meditate

culled from: http://zenhabits.net/meditate/
Written by:Leo Babauta


While many people think of meditation as something you might do with a teacher, in a Zen Center, it can be as simple as paying attention to your breath while sitting in your car or on the train, or while sitting at the coffee shop or in your office, or while walking or showering.

It can take just one or two minutes if you’re busy. There’s no excuse for not doing it, when you simplify the meditation habit.

Why Meditate?

Why create a small daily meditation practice? There are countless reasons, but here are some of my favorite:

It relieves stress and helps you to relax.
When you practice mindfulness, you can carry it out to everyday life.
Mindfulness helps you to savor life, change habits, live simply and slowly, be present in everything you do.
Meditation has been shown to have mental benefits, such as improved focus, happiness, memory, self-control, academic performance and more.
Some research on meditation has indicated that it may have other health benefits, including improved metabolism, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure and more.
Actually, some of the best benefits of meditation are hard to define — you begin to understand yourself better, for example, and form a self-awareness level you’ve never had before.

Most simply, sitting for just a few minutes of meditation is an oasis of calm and relaxation that we rarely find in our lives these days. And that, in itself, is enough.

How to Do It Daily

Knives in My Throat: Documentary About a Black Woman, Bipolar Disorder &...

I came across a wonderful PSA from Abiola Abrams on Youtube and I felt it important to share some of her work…

The full title is "Knives in My Throat: The Year I Survived When My Mind Tried to Kill Me." Taqiyya lived in Harlem, NY at the time and her family lived in Long Island. She was 25 when this film was made and is now in her 30s, happy and healthy with a family of her own. This is a film about race, class, family, mental health awareness and removing taboos.

Documentary Episode 1: http://youtu.be/xeg0FKH-Rhc

Documentary Episode 2: An Important movie about depression, suicide, love, survival and family. | Abiola Abrams worked with her to find healing and reduce stigmas around depression and mental illness in African Americans using drama therapy and spoken word poetry as a healing tool. The first film to address mental health for black women in the hip hop generation.

Trigger warning. Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline



Find more at: http://AbiolaTV.com

Time to Change: When mental health meets Black and Minority Ethnic issues in the media

Mental health problem + Black or Minority Ethnic background = negative coverage in the media? News reports featuring people with this combination of background and experience can often be quite negative. Why is this? Does it increase the stigma? Do features in the media on mental health include a diverse enough range of voices? Time to Change, the anti-stigma campaign run by the UK’s two largest mental health charities, Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, is holding an exclusive free event for print and broadcast journalists, and factual TV/radio producers in central London.

This event will help you understand the impact your work can have on Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people with mental health problems and their friends, families and employers too. There’ll be examples of good practice, and advice on how to uncover hidden stories. Issues that will be covered include why news reports about BME people with mental health issues tend to be negative and how we can change that, how newspaper stories, documentaries and TV news features on mental health affect different communities, why BME celebrity role models rarely speak out about mental health in the media, and how to find news stories and gain the trust of different communities.

An expert panel will include Nina Hossain from ITV News, Kunal Dutta from The Independent, Eddie Nestor from BBC London 94.9, and George Ruddock from The Voice. The panel will also be joined by a Time to Change media volunteer from a BME background with lived experience of mental health problems. They will give their view on how the media covers these issues and what it is like to share your personal story in the press. After the panel debate, there will be time for questions from the audience followed by a chance to network over drinks and sandwiches.

It takes place on Tuesday 14 October, at BMA House, Tavistock Square, London, WC1H 9JP. Registartion opens at11.30am with the debate and Q&A at 12-1.30pm. More information about Time to Change can be found at www.time-to-change.org.uk

Get Outside

To mark the end of our World Mental Health Day 2014 campaign The Amalgamation Project and Innovation Factory in collaboration with Luvneandmy will be hosting a picnic today October 12th from 5:30pm

“If there’s one antidote to emotional distress, it’s human connection. We’re a species that’s meant to be with others.” Kit Yarrow. 

FIRST 30 PPL RECEIVE FRESH JUICE FROM Simply Green

Need A Ride? Use the Promo Code UBERLAGOSMHD and receive 2 Free rides (up to N3000)! Uber. There will also be a raffle for all attendees. The winner (random drawing) will get 1 day of Free Uber rides and Uber swag.

See You There!!!!

‪#‎YogaPicnicMHD‬

‪#‎luvmeandmyMHD‬

‪#‎ifactoryngMHD‬

Your Diet & Your Mind With Sasa's Kitchen

The role our diets play in promoting good mental health is often over shadowed by the emphasis currently place on  prescription (or self) medication and to a lesser extent counselling. Having a balanced diet does wonders for improving behavioural and emotional cognition.

Sasa's Kitchen provides innovative ideas to traditional African cuisine. They have a penchant for using healthy, fresh and non GMO produce. Saratu Bantu the lead chef talks through her experiences with the topic of mental health and shares an easy recipe for our readers to recreate at home.

Mental illness is something we don't discuss where I come from. It is something other people have; it is not an African illness. One isn't allowed to feel sad or down let alone display mental illness. "What do you have to be sad about when you have more than most people in the country?" You will find people asking especially the older folks. "You have God by your side, no weapons fashioned against you shall prosper, amen", they continue. "Ah! I didn't hear you say amen", they frown.

10 secrets to success with Effa Management

 1) How you think is everything. Think success not failure, what you are trying to achieve is to teach your mind how to seek the positive and not negative from every situation. "If you can control it then do it and if you cant control it then change your attitude towards it.

 2) Decide your true dreams and goals. A new years resolution that you don't write down is just a dream. Writing it down starts the plan. Dreams + A Written Plan= Step 3

 3) Take Action. A plan is nothing if it just sits there catching dust. Put it in to action, take control of your goals and aspirations. Do nothing and you will stay the same as you were yesterday and the day before and the day before that.

Uber + Sound Mind Africa Raising Mental Health Awareness with Bizzle

Laughter is said to be the best medicine and this Mental Health Day, a global initiative to highlight the often-stigmatized issues surrounding mental health, Uber Lagos is teaming up with Sound Mind Africa and Bizzle to raise awareness with a double dose of it.

Laughter has been well documented for its role in positively promoting mental health through the reduction of stress and anxiety. Taking laughter as the basis of our intervention, Sound Mind Africa has collaborated with Uber Lagos and popular personality Bizzle Osikoya to run the “Uber Lagos MHD” competition.

How to Enter: 

• Download and register the Uber app on your device then enter the promo code: UBERLAGOSMHD

• Hashtag your Video #UberLagosMHD, follow and tag @uberlagos

• Upload your 15 second video to instagram by OCT 10th at 12PM

• Videos will be reposted on OCT 10^th 2014 via http://instagram.com/bizzleo1and the winner with the most likes selected by 5pm

The participant whose post has the most likes will win ONE-WEEK worth of FREE Uber rides. 

All new Uber account holders will be eligible for a free ride (up to N3,000) with UBERLAGOSMHD promo code. 

Sound Mind Africa World Mental Health Day Campaign 2014

World Mental Health Day is the annual global celebration of mental health education, awareness and advocacy, taking place on the 10^th October 2014.

In order to help spread the mental health message, Sound Mind Africa are staging an interdisciplinary campaign to engage the general public through a variety of interventions taking place online and within Lagos.  Founder Oyindamola Fakeye describes the basis of this initiative as “An opportunity to provide a synergistic delivery of this important issue.”

1. #uberlagosMHD
2. #BrainFoodMHD
3. #MotivatedMHD
4. #RetailtherapyMHD
5. #Eden MHD
6. #HealthyspacesMHD

7. #YogaPicnicMHD

#luvmeandmyMHD

#ifactoryngMHD
8. #DanceMHD

Mental Health and the Church

Faith is a key factor in many people's lives and is found in almost all cultures in Africa and as such leaders within religious organisations are often sought out to provide various levels of counselling and support. 

On Friday, October 10, 2014 (World Mental Health Day), Rick and Kay Warren will host “24 Hours of Hope,” a free global online event designed to encourage individuals living with a mental illness, educate and support their families, and equip church leaders for compassionate and effective mental health ministry.

The “24 Hours of Hope” broadcast features messages from the historic Gathering on Mental Health and the Church (including additional new interviews and messages) from over 30 speakers. These messages are designed to offer hope as well as practical tools to those living with depression, Bipolar Disorder, eating disorders, addictions, anxiety, and Borderline Personality Disorder. Topics include removing stigma, suicide-risk reduction, church counseling, support groups, crisis management, and holistic care.

http://mentalhealthandthechurch.com

Living With a Black Dog

As we edge closer to Mental Health Day 2014 its important to highlight some of the important issues surrounding Mental Health, one such issue being that of depression.



Depression is a state many can relate to either in small doses and in some cases much more acute episodes. At times we do not know what the best course of action is when we are faced with or are living with someone who is battling through it. The World Health Organisation has developed a simple yet informative guide to offer some assistance.

Being stressed can make you fat. FACT!

Majiri Otobo from LuvMeandMy

In our day-to-day hustle and bustle, we sometimes do not realise how dealing with, let’s call them life’s challenges, affects both our mind and body. Being calm not only gives you peace, but also triggers certain signals to your body allowing it to focus its energy on key body functions.

Evidently our body is an amazing machine designed by nature. Our buildings, jobs, cars, roads are all human construct that have effected the way we interact with our environment. Our bodies were designed for a world where there were potentially fewer things to be stressed over with more disastrous consequences.

So a bit of traffic or your boss being a bit of an @&£ would be significantly low on the stressor list in comparison to becoming Mufasa’s lunch (Mufasa, THE Lion King ….for adults who no longer use Disney references).

Survival would be the ultimate reason for stress if we lived like the cavemen did.  Our bodies, would therefore use the bio-chemical signals of stress to make sure it stores as much energy in our body as fat in order to prepare for the perceived threat of a “famine”. Therefore when we are stressed our bodies make us fatter to protect us.

People Don’t Get Depressed in Nigeria

Essay from the print issue of 120 Granta: Medicine.

Culled from http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/People-Dont-Get-Depressed-in-Nigeria

It is a cold January morning and I am sitting in a cafe on a busy London street. Looking out of the window, I watch people bustle determinedly along the pavement. I remember how my English friends used to complain that I walked too slowly when I first arrived in London. I thought they walked too fast, but now, in the chill of winter, I find myself quickening my own pace and lengthening my strides, eager to get back to warmth. I unfold the newspaper that I’ve found lying on the table and struggle to keep the still-unfamiliar, outsized pages from encroaching upon the space of the people seated at the tables next to me. I open the newspaper and the word ‘Nigeria’ catches my eye. It is funny how my mind always, almost unconsciously, seems to seek that word out whenever I am reading a paper. Sometimes I am fooled and the reference is to Nicaragua, but this time my eyes have found a worthy target. It’s a feature on the young British Nigerian novelist Helen Oyeyemi in which she speaks of her struggle with depression in her teenage years and the difficulty her parents faced with understanding it. ‘Because people don’t get depressed in Nigeria,’ she says. ‘They were like, “Cheer up, get on with it.”’

The black words sliding over the page carry me back in time to another place, where I too, like Helen’s parents, believed that people don’t get depressed in Nigeria.

It has been a hot night; much of it spent rolling away from the concrete against which my bed is pushed. The walls, retaining the fiery, dry heat from the sun of the previous day, burn with an intensity that seems to scorch my skin when, in my fitful sleep, I roll to the edge of the bed closest to them. I have woken up with a start several times, finally dozing off in the early hours of the morning.

I wake up to a clucking sound outside my bedroom window. It is guttural, low-pitched, and there is a rustling in the fields of guinea corn that stand sentry immediately outside our low-eaved modern I am likita – Hausa for doctor – and I am twenty-seven years old, freshly qualified from medical school in southern Nigeria bungalow. I walk to the window and peer through the grimy glass louvres, past the hole-ridden metal mosquito netting, and see a herd of cattle making its gentle, almost silent way through the fields. In a distant corner, I can see the Fulani herdsman, a boy really – he is the source of the clucking noise. Whenever a particularly adventurous cow threatens to stray too far, he clucks, softly, almost under his breath, yet loudly enough for the sound to carry into my bedroom, and the cow wanders back to the fold. I remember the stories I have heard about Fulani being able to ‘talk’ to their cattle, and from what I can see, it seems that the tales told by an old driver of my father’s who had once lived in the North are true.

Depression and the Loss of Robin Williams

I was so sad to hear about the suicide and battle with depression and it moved me to action. Having battled with depression for many years I know what its like to face this terrible disease head on. I have been saddened by a lot of the negative reactions to his death as though I am against self harm and suicide but I also can empathise with those who feel " mentally lost". There are multiple treatment methods for depression and associated disorders and I hope to highlight some of them here especially in relation to modern practices in Africa.

 I think it's important to state that anyone can go through depression and there are people around us who suffer in silence, we must be able to provide an environment that offers up a safe place to express the vulnerability they feel in relation to their situation.  

If you or anyone you know are battling with mental health issues, encourage them to seek professional help. There is nothing wrong with seeing a qualified psychologist, psychiatrist and/or counsellor, I believe that even the most "well adjusted" of us can benefit at some time in our lives from seeking help.

If you are in need of further information contact: soundmindafrica@gmail.com

Please check in here regularly for updates.

 #riprobinwilliams