Rise up with Priya.

10/10/2025

World Mental Health Day is observed annually on October 10. It serves as a reminder of the importance of good mental health and the need to prioritize and invest in it.

This year's theme is "Access to Services: Mental Health in Catastrophes and Emergencies." This theme emphasizes the critical need for individuals to protect their mental health during times of global instability. The world is facing significant challenges, and even if you are not directly affected by current events, it can still feel overwhelming. Remember, it is okay to ask for help, no matter what you or anyone else might be experiencing.

While we may not have the power to change everything on a global scale, we can take steps to protect ourselves and others from feeling overwhelmed and hopeless in the face of these events.

This year's campaign highlights the urgent need to address the mental health and psychosocial needs of those affected by humanitarian emergencies. Crises such as natural disasters, conflicts, and public health emergencies can lead to emotional distress. Supporting the mental well-being of individuals during these crises is vital—it saves lives and provides people with the strength to cope, the opportunity to heal, and the ability to recover and rebuild, both individually and as communities.

World Mental Health Day serves as a powerful reminder that there is no health without mental health.
Despite increasing awareness, significant challenges continue to hinder mental health care globally. These barriers make it difficult for many individuals to receive timely and appropriate support. Some common challenges in mental health care include:

- Stigma and misconceptions
- Limited access to care in many regions
- Shortage of mental health professionals

Supporting mental well-being begins with everyday habits and attitudes that strengthen resilience and reduce stress. Simple lifestyle choices can have a significant impact on maintaining good mental health. Here are some practical ways to support mental health in daily life:

- Practice mindfulness and manage stress
- Stay active, get enough rest, and eat well
- Encourage open conversations about mental health
- Seek timely professional guidance

Small steps can promote positive mental well-being and contribute to a happier and healthier future. Consider these actions:

- Set realistic expectations
- Incorporate exercise into your routine
- Use meditation to relieve stress
- Take breaks from social media
- Ask for help when needed.

03/05/2025

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to raise awareness and reduce the stigma surrounding mental and behavioral health conditions. It is important to highlight how mental illness can impact everyone—patients, providers, families, and society as a whole.

Mental health awareness is essential for reducing stigma, encouraging early intervention, and fostering empathy and understanding. By normalizing discussions about mental health, we create a more compassionate society where individuals feel empowered to seek help, leading to improved mental well-being.

Let’s break the silence and stigma surrounding mental health by promoting awareness and understanding. Mental health is just as important as physical health, yet it often remains unnoticed or untreated.

31/12/2024

As we stand on the brink of a New Year, I want to remind you of a powerful truth: the most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself.

As we step into the year 2025, I challenge you to focus on yourself to prioritize your growth, healing, and inner peace. In the pursuit of external achievements, we often lose sight of the one thing that truly impacts every area of our lives.

In 2025, choose to center yourself and be intentional about nurturing your mind, body, and soul.

Here are some key points to consider:

- Embrace vulnerability.
- Set boundaries.
- Understand the importance of rest and recovery.
- Make rest a priority.
- Prioritize your mental, physical, and emotional health.
- Choose self-compassion over self-criticism.
- Speak to yourself with the same gentleness you use with others.
- Cultivate self-awareness to recognize your strengths and vulnerabilities.
- Observe your thoughts—are they empowering or limiting?

By practicing mindfulness, you can become more attuned to your thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations.

Be authentic. Have the courage to stand in your truth, even when it feels vulnerable, and release the need for approval to feel worthy.

Wish you all a very Happy New Year!!

09/10/2024

SELF-REGULATION

Strategies for Managing Your Emotions and Behavior

Everyone experiences unpleasant emotions such as anger, jealousy, fear, or anxiety from time to time. It's a natural part of being human. However, an important aspect of living a fulfilling life and maintaining positive relationships is the ability to manage your emotions and behavior, especially during stressful times. Self-regulation is one way to achieve this.

What is self-regulation?

Self-regulation refers to the ability to control your behaviors, thoughts, emotions, choices, and impulses. Developing self-regulation skills can help you keep negative emotions in check and think before reacting. Essentially, it involves self-control and emotion regulation.

Why is self-regulation important?

Individuals with strong self-regulation abilities can maintain a composed outlook and respond thoughtfully and maturely when faced with challenging or distressing situations. On the other hand, those who struggle with emotional regulation may experience high levels of stress and anxiety, impacting their physical and mental well-being.

Improving your emotion regulation skills can better equip you to face obstacles, big or small, throughout your life.

Self-regulation begins with exploring and understanding your behaviors, emotional reactions, and impulses. Mindfulness and cognitive behavioral strategies are two effective ways to achieve this.

Mindfulness plays a significant role in self-regulation. It involves focusing awareness on the breath, expanding awareness to passing thoughts, and taking the time to calm them by focusing on the present moment without judgment. Practicing mindfulness can help you develop the capacity to deal with problems effectively.

Cognitive behavioral strategies aid in reducing internal triggers of emotional dysregulation by replacing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors with positive ones.

Cognitive behavioral techniques include identifying and labeling your emotions, understanding the reasons for your emotions (which may involve distorted thoughts or catastrophizing), and learning to let go of painful feelings. It's also important to reflect on any regrettable responses to difficult and stressful situations in the past and replace those behaviors with positive alternatives.

The ability to self-regulate can be learned and improved. When experiencing upsetting emotions, remind yourself to calm down and think more clearly. Try to relax by taking deep, slow breaths, counting to 10, or taking a walk. Refrain from reacting until you feel in control of your emotions. Focus on responding rather than simply reacting.

29/09/2024

Join us to support our work

Hope Ek A.S.H.A. is organising a FREE event on Dementia in partnership with the Home Management and Care Givers Sector Skill Council (HMCGSSC), Dementia India Alliance (DIA),Rotary Club of Delhi Shine, Apollo Medicare, and Indo Gulf Hospital on the 29th of Septemberin New Delhi.

- Interact with domain experts in the field of Dementia - medical practitioners, mental health experts, and dementia caregivers. The event will be a space for you to interactwith people who have been working in this field for several years.

- Learn more about the condition by listening to specially curated topics by our experts.

- Meet our first batch of professional caregivers specially trained in caring for people withDementia. They will also perform a skit to depict their caregiving journey.

- Free Memory Assessment for the first 30 attendees.

29/07/2024

Are anxiety and stress preventing you from fully enjoying life? Does the thought of speaking in public, driving over a bridge, or just going to the grocery store fill you with panic? Do you find yourself dreading social encounters or engaging in obsessive behaviors? If so, you’re not alone. Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychiatric conditions.

You have many options for managing your anxiety, including relaxation techniques, exercise, improving your diet, getting more sleep, psychotherapy, medications, and alternative approaches such as mindfulness meditation and yoga, along with relaxation techniques like deep breathing, visualization, and body scanning.

To make anxiety treatments work for you, persist in your treatment, learn to cope with stress, cut back on to***co and caffeine, and get help from friends and family.

Anxiety results from a complicated mix of genetics, life experiences, brain chemistry, and personality. While it might seem like many factors are working against you, you need to take on anxiety and stress with confidence.

Lastly, do not hesitate to seek help from mental health professionals if you are unable to manage it on your own and if it's affecting your daily life.

24/06/2024

COGNITIVE RESERVE

Cognitive reserve refers to your brain's ability to adapt and find alternative ways to accomplish tasks. It represents how flexible your brain is in utilizing skills and resources to solve problems and deal with challenges. Cognitive reserve is built through a lifetime of learning and curiosity.

The essence of our brain health and cognitive fitness program lies in making lifestyle changes. Researchers have identified six key factors for effective brain health and mental fitness programs:

1. Eat a plant-based diet
2. Exercise regularly
3. Get sufficient sleep
4. Manage stress effectively
5. Maintain social connections
6. Continuously challenge your brain

These factors form a comprehensive plan, and they are interconnected. Simply improving your diet or adding exercise to your routine is not enough to prevent cognitive decline. Instead, exercise, diet, sleep, stress management, social interaction, and mental stimulation work together to produce positive outcomes.

19/06/2024

HOW TO SHAPE YOUR CHILD’S BEHAVIOR: EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES AND TIPS

Teach your family rules to your kids: Children will not understand the rules until you teach them. Hence, it is important to set clear rules and expectations to guide their behavior.

You cannot force them to control: Young children have little self-control. They need you to teach them to express their feelings and emotions through words, so they do not end up resorting to kicking, hitting, or biting when angry.

Avoid threats: Instead of threatening them, practice alternative behavior. It is always effective to briefly ignore minor misbehavior and tell them what to do instead.

Maintain a healthy distance when necessary: Carefully supervise your child and watch out for conflicts with their friends. In minor disputes, maintain a healthy distance and let your child resolve it on their own. However, in case of a serious dispute involving violence, intervene and keep them separate until they calm down.

Teach them to say ‘no’: Teach your kids to say ‘no’ in a firm tone of voice. Make sure to teach by example and show how settling differences with words is always more effective than resorting to physical violence.

Make use of healthy distractions: It is always effective to distract your child when they start to get upset. To begin with, you can get them involved in another activity to help them calm down. Strictly avoid ‘bribing’ them to behave differently.

Controlling your temper: Controlling your temper is one of the most effective ways to model appropriate behavior. If you express anger in quiet and peaceful ways, your child is more likely to follow your example and behave similarly.

Although disciplining your child can seem like a much more challenging task, it is most times the most important part of parenthood. Your child needs to understand when they are wrong. As a parent, you must be able to teach them to take responsibility for their actions and be willing to accept the consequences of their actions.

29/05/2024

Caring for someone with Alzheimer's disease is a balancing act. You keep your loved one safe and comfortable, keep track of their medications and doctor's appointments, and give them your love and support. But your life matters, too. It's just as important to keep up with your work, family, and social life.

Try to remember this when your loved one is acting out. "Together we can make a difference." 💜

28/02/2024

Sorry, I haven't been around due to some health issues. I'm back now 😊

28/02/2024

MENTAL HEALTH

Everyone feels worried anxious or down from time to time. But relatively few people develop a Mental illness.

Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act.

Dozens of Mental Illnesses have been identified and defined. They include depression, generalized anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, and many more.

The exact cause of most Mental Disorders is not known, but research suggests that a combination of factors, including heredity, biology, psychological trauma, and environmental stress, might be involved.

Signs and Symptoms of a Mental Illness:

Feeling down for a while

Extreme swings in mood

Withdrawing from family, friends, or activities

Low energy or problems sleeping

Often feeling angry, hostile, or violent

Feeling paranoid, hearing voices, or having hallucinations

Often thinking about death or su***de

Insomnia

The good news is that it can often be treated if diagnosed earlier.

Here are some tips to boost your mental health.

Eat well and nutritious food

Avoid smoking

Drink sensibly

Take care of your body

Maintain a peaceful mind

Get quality sleep

Practice self-love

Write things down

Be Social

Ask for help

Talk about your feelings

Keep active with some activities you love

Take a break

Accept who you are

Value yourself.

10/10/2023

This year 10 october, 2023, the World Mental Health Day theme is “Mental health is a universal human right”, a reminder call to everyone worldwide to create awareness, improve knowledge, drive actions that promote and safeguard everyone’s mental health as a universal human right.

Mental health is a basic human right for all people. Everyone, whoever and wherever they are, has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health. This includes the right to be protected from mental health risks, the right to available, accessible, acceptable, and good quality care, and the right to liberty, independence and inclusion in the community.

Despite the advancements in many spheres globally, Mental Health is still stigmatised on a collective level. We need to relook into this very seriously and embrace a positive understanding of how we all can take care of ourselves.