A feature on a recently started initiative by a student from The University of Delhi (DU) working on providing a helpful ear to people suffering from mental health issues, and conversations with the founder.
The Happy Company was an initiative started by Bhavika Mehta, currently a second-year student pursuing the BA programme in Sociology and English at Sri Venkateswara College. On talking to Bhavika, it was evident that she wanted to work towards reducing mental health issues in India, and The Happy Company is one step she has already taken towards this goal.
Here are some of the questions DU Beat posed:
- How does The Happy Company work?
The Happy company is available on Instagram where anyone who wants to talk can simply drop them a text, after which they will be assigned a volunteer who will talk to them, listen to their problems, and try to help them in any way possible.
- What motivated you to start this project?
While India has slowly started acknowledging the existence and reality of mental illnesses, most organisations are making efforts to raise awareness, while not much has been done about reducing mental illness and improving mental health and that’s where The Happy Company comes in.
- The Happy Company was started as a one-woman operation. Tell us more about its inception.
I just made the Instagram page one day, and operated it myself from June 2018 to April 2019, but the page became bigger and bigger and I had to start looking for volunteers to help respond to all the messages.
- How does the organisation handle a situation where someone with severe mental health issues approaches them, considering the fact that you and the volunteers aren’t licensed professionals?
My team and I are working on building and verifying a database of psychologists and psychiatrists to recommend in such situations.
- What are the Government and other educational institutes should do about the students’ mental health, with suicide rates ever-increasing among students?
Most government schools and colleges still don’t have psychological counsellors including her college Sri Venkateshwara and several other DU colleges. Students should be there to help other students, that students lending an ear to help each other is always helpful.
To conclude, Bhavika said that the most important steps to improve basic health are ones that we take ourselves.
“Keeping ourselves before other people, that is keeping ourselves and our self-worth as our first priority. The other important step being taking some time at the end of the day to evaluate the last 24 hours, and finding the things we enjoyed most and which made us the happiest in that timeframe and working on them more,” is the note Bhavika left us with.
For those looking for a helpful ear: Click here
For those looking to volunteer: Click here
Feature Image Credits: The Happy Company
Prabhanu Kumar Das