This week New Zealand is celebrating Mental Health Awareness Week, which follows the "World Mental Health Day" on Tuesday, October 10.
This also follows an almost month-long intense election campaigning which focussed heavily on the crisis in our mental health services.
New Zealand is having a serious conversation around the fast deteriorating mental health situation of its citizenry.
The mental health awareness week is expecting New Zealanders to have a conversation about their mental health situation.
What is our South Asian community doing?
Are they opening themselves up and having any conversation with anyone?
Or they are choosing to live in false pretence that they are somehow magically immune from the vagaries of modern life.
Yes, more and more experts are opining that modern world is killing us, and we are increasingly coming to the grips of depression, anxiety, sadness and other emotional health issues.
The South Asian communities cannot choose to behave like Nero, who fiddled when Rome burned.
It’s time to speak up or speak with someone to get a timely help in dealing with internal struggles.
Probably this is what two young crusaders of mental health are seeking to achieve through their new start-up – Your Fight is Over – providing people with a platform to break the silence around their invisible struggles.
Seher and Mehwish – two Aucklanders of South Asian descent, who are sisters and registered psychologist too, trained locally at the University of Auckland, are the aspirational faces behind this relatively new startup.
Sehar Moughal came from Pakistan to New Zealand more than a decade ago and became a registered psychologist.
Together with her sister Mehwish, she is committed to reaching out to make a difference in the community.
“My sister, Mehwish and I are strong advocates of mental health struggles especially raising awareness in our communities,” Seher, one of the sister-duo told The Indian Weekender.
“We have made three short films in the last five years tackling depression, suicide and domestic violence.
“We launched our website in June,” Seher said.
The website has multiple goals, but first and foremost it seeks to create a space where people can share their stories about their invisible struggles without any fear of being judged or peer pressure.
In the long term, these sister-duos are seeking to develop intervention strategies such as an app, a podcast, and other digital resources.
“Overall, we aim to raise more awareness about the silent struggles of people for example, what our international students suffer and find ways to provide support,” Seher concluded.
As they say that a journey of thousand miles begins with a single step, and for many, this could be a single click of the website - https://www.yourfightisover.co.nz/