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VOL. IV | ISSUE IV<br />
MARGINS<br />
COMMUNITY<br />
CONVERSATIONS:<br />
PSYCHOLOGICAL<br />
HEALTH SOCIETY<br />
by Saman Saeed<br />
I conducted an interview with Gulpreet Abrol, co-Vice President of the Psychological Health<br />
Society (PHS). PHS is a UofT student group that focuses on creating educational, leadership,<br />
philanthropic, and social opportunities for students with a direct focus on mental health initiatives.<br />
This interview explores the initiative as a whole, alongside the mental health crisis<br />
at the university.<br />
fact, during my interview with the president<br />
we just clicked, and I felt as if I could spend<br />
hours discussing mental health and ways to<br />
give back to the community. When I met the<br />
team as well, I felt as this is where I belong. It<br />
was such a supportive environment because<br />
I knew that not only will they share my beliefs<br />
and perspective, but they would also allow<br />
me to grow as an individual.<br />
SS: You are absolutely right. There is so much<br />
stigma around the world regarding mental<br />
health. Even here in Pakistan, people just<br />
don’t want to talk about it, and they pretend<br />
like everything is fine. Given that, it is always<br />
an amazing feeling when you are a part of<br />
something which is moving towards better,<br />
and you know the greater good. So, as you<br />
mentioned you are one the leaders, could<br />
you share a few specific goals of PHS as an<br />
organization?<br />
Saman Saeed: Thank you for taking the time<br />
out to speak with me about mental health and<br />
the Psychological Health Society. I really appreciate<br />
this. Could you just tell us a little about<br />
yourself, your role in the PHS and about PHS<br />
in general?<br />
Gulpreet Abrol: Sure! I am a second-year student<br />
at UTSC. I am doing a double major in<br />
human biology and mental health studies. I<br />
joined PHS last September, and I am currently<br />
Co-Vice President of the Leadership Department.<br />
My main responsibility is to hold training<br />
sessions for all the new executives. I train them<br />
in the field of mental health and teach them<br />
how to organize events specific to increasing<br />
student engagement, especially during this<br />
pandemic. As an organization, this is our primary<br />
goal. We want students to be involved<br />
and feel as if they have a safe community that<br />
they can rely on.<br />
We host monthly events, the most recent was a<br />
research outreach workshop for students. We<br />
want students to benefit the most out of our<br />
events. In the following months, we are looking<br />
at events that we have been planning for a<br />
long time. Also, being a part of PHS is not just<br />
about being a part of the leadership group, the<br />
team itself is very welcoming - it is just a great<br />
environment, especially during this pandemic.<br />
I feel as if I found my place while learning<br />
some very important skills. It is a really nice<br />
experience overall.<br />
SS: Yeah, it definitely sounds like a really good<br />
experience and extremely wholesome too. So,<br />
what inspired you to join PHS?<br />
GA: There are few reasons, the first is that<br />
while I was in my first year, I saw all these<br />
events that PHS was holding. For example,<br />
they had a “Words to Inspire” event during Valentine’s<br />
Day where they were giving out roses<br />
and you could write notes to your loved ones.<br />
Being in a university, I had never seen that. I<br />
mean I saw it in high school, but it was really<br />
nice to see someone take such a good initiative<br />
to create such a warm environment. So,<br />
I followed their Instagram , DM’d them asking<br />
for opportunities and they would always reply<br />
in a really welcoming manner such as “we<br />
would love to have you, keep on checking for<br />
opportunities,” since this was in the summer.<br />
Another thing that inspired me was an initiative<br />
called “Humans of UTSC” where people<br />
would share their struggles with mental health<br />
and how they overcame it, and I felt as if the<br />
community needs to know that it’s okay to<br />
have struggles and that there are people who<br />
support you. It was very unique, that PHS was<br />
very focused on students and creating a safe<br />
space for them.<br />
Lastly, the idea of having a psychology club at<br />
the university was really inspirational for me<br />
because of my background - I am from India<br />
where there are so many stigmas surrounding<br />
mental health growing up, so I always wanted<br />
to be a part of a community that valued<br />
my beliefs and shared my perspectives. In<br />
GA: Basically, I don’t think that PHS has a<br />
specific goal because we aren’t just catering<br />
towards holding events. We are basically trying<br />
to address mental health as a whole. So,<br />
we have poems and prompts going up every<br />
week. We have “Thursday Thoughts” and<br />
“Self-Care Sundays”. We have one individual<br />
just focused on finding mental health resources.<br />
PHS finds educational, leadership and philanthropic<br />
resources and social opportunities<br />
for students. However, at the end of the day,<br />
our focus is mental health. Essentially, we take<br />
various aspects and combine them in order to<br />
have a holistic approach towards addressing<br />
mental health.<br />
The goal is also to have an inclusive community,<br />
do something good for the community,<br />
at least for me because I try to fill those<br />
gaps in our community. Other than that, our<br />
long-term goal, which was recently established,<br />
is that PHS wants to become an official<br />
non-profit organization in the Greater Toronto<br />
Area (GTA). We really want to focus on being<br />
there for the community aside from being a<br />
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