OHLI's Unplugged: How to Manage Your Mental Health

We'll get started now so I just want to welcome everyone to our second episode of allies unplugged it's the osmosis podcast where we dive into Healthcare topics from the student perspective as members of the osmosis Health leader initiative that's OHLI for short hence the name OE podcast all these unplugged I'm Yasir Taki and I'm joined with my co-host Parsa and today we are honored to have two very lovely guests Bashirat and Mustafa I hope I didn't butcher your name together you did movie sorry about that and today we'll be exploring as you've probably seen the title Mental Health on this world mental health day so it's definitely a very broad topic and hopefully we'll be able to four of us come together like the Power Rangers and learn more and able to give Insight towards the struggles that one a student from Healthcare might be facing throughout their training and whether you're nursing you're in medicine physiotherapy so I feel like this would be a very nice discussion and with that being said everyone in this call I'm sure has definitely something to share to give you the very lovely audience again something to keep an eye out for not to kind not to stress you out in any way because you're probably already stressed enough but it kind of like how to possibly manage those phases in time that may come across as very difficult so to everyone who is tuning in live I see your all lovely riding your lovely countries we also got from Gambia that's awesome and I request of you to please ask your questions in the chat and we'll be happy to read them out and try to incorporate the questions into this somewhat of an interactive session and yeah so yeah I just want to welcome again our guests we have Bashar Abdul Rahim who is a sixth year medical student at the med Medical University of wood it's from Poland and she's originally from Nigeria she has a strong passion for Dermatology she actually joined the OHLI program in 2023 and has since become an active researcher and a valuable contributor to our team I also want to welcome our second guest Mustafa he's an Iraqi medical doctor who grew up in the UAE and he pursued a career of medicine in derton I hope I pronounce that one right that one's in Hungary he wants to specialize in plastic surgery and before starting Medical School Mustafa spent several years honing several years at honing his passion for medicine and he ultimately shaped his journey through that he grew up in growing up in Abu Dhabi and he later moved to Hungary for six years from medical school he developed a strong interest in plastic surgery and during his time in the UK where he completed his internship Mustafa has been a part of the OHLI program also since 2023 hosting many successful events and have been an amazing contributor to the community hi everyone Hi everyone and I guess before we get started maybe we could just say a bit about ourselves as well in case this is your first time joining the a PL I'm par I'm a sixth year medical student my final year based in Istanbul and have an interest in gastro that's all I could pretty much say from my from my background nothing much so there's a lot more interesting things about par so he's just holding them for now we'll learn more about him in this podcast for sure my name is yaki I am going to St George's University in Grenada I'm currently rotating in New York I'm in my final year of medical school in the I set my applications now it's interview season so waiting for those to come in and hopefully we'll meet many of you along the journey so without further Ado I think we can get started with our episode today so with that being said my aamc ID is for no I don't have an AMC I but we are going to start on the topic so the topic of mental health Where Do We Begin so you know I just I would like to pose a question maybe we could start by asking the audience are more than welcome to join in as well but as well the panelists mental health like what is it like seriously where does it come from what does it do right I think mental health is literally a broad topic and I don't think it can narrow it down to just like two sentences but for my understanding mental health is the cognitive emotional and behavioral well-being of an individual and also the way an individual is able to manage stress and I'm so glad we're having this conversation because mental health is something that has been frowned upon for the longest time and we need to raise awareness and this is very important and I'm so glad to be part of this yeah and I totally think that it's an important topic to discuss in healthcare because a lot of people don't really discuss it nowadays and we need to remove this stigma about it around it and I think every one of us Define mental health in his own way and there is no specific term for it so it could be stress burnout anxiety dealing with exams failures and hopefully we'll touch up on that in this podcast yeah I definitely think so it's not it's not just all in our heads Health yeah it's also the mind and body is connected which is true think doctor I mean Zama I was watching his him the other day a video of his and he was saying mental health is physical health it can't separate the two the two are intertwined fully so I really like the points that you guys brought up about how it's not as recognized as it should be and it's something that we really lacking of and on this mental health day it's very important that we discuss this topic you know and bring it to the Forefront especially as us students we're going to be leading Healthcare in a couple years when we become doctors and hopefully we can bring that change yeah totally agree with you yes sir so with that being said how about we begin with the experience with mental health so with the journey into med the health care so medical school in this case since all of us are in medical school for the audience in your Healthcare education and let's start from there maybe how you've come across it if you have come across it yeah definitely I think as medical students and most of us have probably been away from home and that's something that I struggled with initially but not as much because I had my family kind of my small family with me in Derton Hungary I had my twin brother with me so I didn't feel that strange and going to another country of course the cultural shock has an effect the language barrier and there are certain things that we can do to make ourselves more comfortable around this area don't you agree Bashat yeah I agree like similar to you I also moved but I don't have a twin brother and or a twin sister so I came here alone and it was definitely very isolating to be in a foreign land and experienced culture c as well and it was hard to navigate but there were things that I did that helped me yeah that's nice yeah so we all definitely have this bit of a history of moving to somewhere to pursue our studies and Jan in the chat has mentioned about impostor syndrome which I think is a very nice well I mean it's not nice but it's very relevant yeah that definitely plays a big role in our mental health for sure you know at one point like imposter syndrome for those who are not too fil me with the term it's like where you're doubting where you belong in like am I really doing this like am I in the right spot like you doubt yourself and that is a big part of mental health and we thank Steph for sharing that article it's very lovely article on how to fight back on imposter syndrome and ways to combat that but on the topic of our journey here for all of us in this call we've had to move for medical school and a lot of people who are watching in also probably have that similar experience so I want to see how ways that you've adapted and dealt with that yeah I think go ahead definitely I journaled that helped me drastically and I also found communities of people who were like-minded like me not only from my same ethnic background but also people who I share similar Hobbies with and that helped me tremendously and how about you Mustafa how what did you do yeah I totally agree with you on the support groups like you need to find people with similar mindset people that always are positive to you and another thing is that when we're going to another culture we have to embrace their culture and also try to fit in somehow obviously staying core to your values while getting closer to the other culture that we're moving into and normal like getting familiar with their norm and culture and also trying to learn the language not necessarily the full language like that would be great but at least the basics of communication I think that's really great and once I started learning the basics I started fitting in more with the with the people in Hungary and definitely to stay open-minded I feel like that's really important when you're moving abroad I agree yeah definitely I think that so if you do have to travel get fit into a new culture fit into trying to find communities that you know you would relate to I could talk a bit about what I've experienced and as well what I continue to see repeating throughout the past six years in medical school and seeing the new course coming in the international students is that in the begin if you're going to a country where you need to learn the language my biggest advice is learn the language in the end so I person Rec Once I arrived in Turkey I grew up in Dubai so not too far from Abu Dhabi it was pretty International Community in in especially the school the high school that I graduated from and eventually moving to Turkey it was a culture shock even though I'm part Turkish because I was not used to being in a population where kind of the rules and etiquette are set are agreed upon between most people not all people there's of course variations and especially ?sic? is a big city for any a Turk listening to this webinar you just know how different parts of Istanbul probably has all different parts of cultures in itself but yeah definitely with that being said I realized that learning the language as soon as possible was one of the most important steps that I needed to make in order to integrate and I to integrate it's a different story if you're not interested that's a whole different discussion but if you do feel especially that language bear that isolation that that as well just feeling lonely in a foreign country or city even it's you probably know it's not the nicest of feelings to have and there's a lot that go on especially since well in the US I like I know that it's a graduate course medical school but here around like Europe Middle East it's an undergraduate course so after high school you're aged 18 and then you go into medical school and you're exploring yourself at that time and you're going through all these changes all at once I think it's give yourself credit if you're going through such a similar experience don't take it too tough on yourself and I'm just going to comment real quickly about the podcast it's called the psychology of your 20s I highly recommend you if you could be in your 30s or whatever age you are but I recommend to definitely go on that podcast and I think it's a nice it covers many topics and many of these topics are very relevant to the sorts of new experiences you be facing as you enter your 20s and with the coming of age understanding where your emotions or where your thoughts or your perceptions are coming from so yeah that's quick shout out to that podcast and apart from that so I'm just going to give the floor back to Yasir before I take the whole time like I said there's a lot to learn about Parsa and we will unravel the secrets behind Parsa through here I love hearing pars talk about all his experiences you can just sit and listen and learn so much but so far we've talked about moving to countries abroad and a think that was brought up was seeking support groups so that's definitely something that helped me like I said moving abroad studying medicine a lot of times you'll be more isolated where you don't have access to family of course now we have technologies that didn't exist back then where now we can FaceTime or video chat that also is one way that I really use to help manage that but also finding support groups as we discussed you know what are some types of support groups that you used to our guests here and also everyone in the chat what type of support groups do you find to help you find people that you can use as support I would definitely recommend a book club where you could share your interest with someone who has some interest is you also I would definitely recommend some sports because definitely that's would relieve you from some stress related to you know medical school yeah I think for me beside family and friends we had this group called the Deerton medical student Association and honestly they always come up with events we have the mental health category and we have many other categories and I think that's a way to go there and connect with other people and it's nice because in my University international study alone and Hungarian study alone and when we go to this de medical student Association we kind of get grouped up together and where we get to interact and share things and I feel like that's really a nice way a nice support group beside that we have psychologist that the university hires for us in case we need any mental health we have mental health groups as well and another thing like B said like sports I think Sports Group we always go on weekends to play football and I feel like football is really great way to grow people together and even to support them mental health aspect when we are like always bombarded with exams and studies so I yeah it's nice to de-stress sometimes yeah so I had a similar experience as well when I was in Grenada for my studies I'm not the type of person during my undergrad and like high school to join as much extracurricular clubs as I as I should have but when I was in Grenada I really found myself isolated at times so I joined for the first time you know a soccer team I joined a lot of interest groups you know in certain Specialties of medicine and even there's like religious clubs on campus and there's so many groups and I really urge everyone that's one thing that you will find is that connection that Mustafa was talking about but he also brought up the point of Psychological Services from the University so I want to see learn more maybe on how does your school tackle and manage mental health and in there my university offers some psychological help like in University of Deon Medical University of Deon and it's a really good service it really does help a lot of students and I've heard good remarks from students and although more can be done because that's the only thing that I currently know that is going on but it it's effective enough but more definitely could be done to help students navigate you know their feeling throughout medical school yeah and I feel more importantly that like these stud these psychologist they exist in the university and they we know that about them but more importantly we need to tackle this stigma about mental health that speak up if you need you know if you need support extra support that is not provided by your family or friends or you know any other group go seek professional help I think that's really important to tackle this stigma about it yeah I think you brought up a very important concept of the stigma with a mental health now I'm not sure if this might apply to you to the panelists or the audience but even though we're in the healthcare field and we are interested in you know event giving that well-deserved holistic health care to the patients to our patients we don't seem to be attending ourselves at all sometimes so and when it comes to mental health especially I've noticed that there's a very different perception when a healthcare worker discloses that they are going through something tough to their colleagues or it's not so for those who did that you most likely probably felt uncomfortable I personally felt uncomfortable when in the beginning I was wondering why is this such a tough thing for me to do and I realize there's still so much stigma around it especially with the culture you can say does play a big role I think when you're more in the International Community perhaps it's taken more into consideration the mental health of colleagues workers patients whatnot but sometimes that could be either lost to detail or approached a very different method by in a different culture but yeah I definitely think this stigma needs to be broken either by seeking help like Mustafa said too a professional or from your close ones it has to start from somewhere and for us being kind of the new incoming healthcare workers we got to break that cycle I definitely think discussions like this like we're having right now would help break the stigma around mental health so we should keep on talking about it because that would definitely help just erase the stigma and improve mental health amongst people in general yeah and the statistics prove that medical most the majority of medical students do somehow suffer from kind of like these challenges and we all know how medical school is like and it's just normal to happen so it's fine if we struggle through this like through stress it's fine to struggle through stress we're more likely to burn out as well so it's fine to talk about it it's not a Tabo it's not yeah okay speaking of research I think study was recently or not recently published on US National Library of Medicine where prevalence rate of depression and anxiety in medical students are around 25 to 35% yeah that's one4 that's one4 student so like us four here probably one of us you know statistically all of us at one point had some had some struggles with mental health and especially with our yeah so it's definitely a very prevalent field and like you guys were saying it's very stigmatized for some reason I remember when I was in in school in my first year the school had like in our first week a talk about mental Health but it was still the first I think it was the first week we're all still getting accustomed and then we just saw that as like an hour to just chill a lot of us didn't take into account those resources that the school offers and it's something that I wish a lot of us more looked back on and reflected and actually Tred to look out for those resources because a lot of times we have this stigma where you know we shouldn't be we should just bottle it up bottle it up or deal with it on our own you know or keep it to yourselves but these are all wrong like again I really love listening to Dr am who's part of the osmosis team he also had a video where I was watching the other day where he pulled the metaphor you know when you're on a flight and you hear the safety talk and they always tell you know when you need the oxygen mask you have to put your mask on yourself before you help the other one I don't remember the exact word they use for it but something like that and that's something that we really should take more of and into breaking that cycle of the stigma about mental health you know how we're talking about it here I encourage everyone to just break that ice and bring it up to friends around you know and ask or check in and see how others are doing and absolutely and I think yes your mic?s just muted if I'm not mistaken yeah I all right until you see is your mic back no it's not sorry I totally agree with your like just recently before graduating due to life situations I got squeezed up with the four exams and thesis defense and I had to do all of that in two months and the only support group that I had was my brother and my twin that my youngest brother and my twin and also my friends who were really supportive and I was always scared after finishing every exam I'm like I'm going to burn out I'm going to burn out but with their support with their motivation and with their words of affirmation right words of affirmation are really important I could eventually do it so what did you guys pass through a similar situation before like this and Do You Believe In The Power of Words yes I definitely Believe In The Power of Words because in medical school I think a lot of our triggers are examinations and like deadlines and it could really take a on your mental health and having like a safe space to fall back on is very important and for me it was my friends as well people who were sharing similar who I shared similar experiences with they definitely helped me overcome my anxiety towards like exams result and it's very important I would I can't stress this enough it's so important to have a good support system it's very like such support system can be family your siblings your part yeah your partner your friends right even your mentors can be a support system for you that's true because they also share resources as well to help you like navigate medical school which is very important exactly there's a proverb I'd like to share with everything that was just talking about it's that he who travels fastest travels alone but he who travels furthest travels with others I do not remember who said that but it has always stuck with me ever since I read it somewhere when I was younger but absolutely I do think finding a support system is important and if you I think also there it's important to note that if you seriously are undergoing something challenging and you do not feel like anyone around you could help I think I can talk a bit about access and like having experiences with a therapist which who professionally trained to be able to address all those concerns you have I mean I say all hopefully all but I mean navigating life is not easy for any of us for anyone and sometimes just we feel like we're stuck somewhere but there's usually other routes that we're just not aware of that's where perceptions play a big role and how you perceive how you perceive this the situation it may be so for example Mustafa you talking a bit about words of affirmation if I'm not mistaken it matters a lot because if someone's not careful with their tone again especially for someone who traveled to a different country you might be told something that was completely said in a good intention but for the rest of that week that's all you've been thinking about because why did that person say I don't know that my work could have been improved and it wasn't up to standard for example and as well perceptions towards different having different options so when you feel like you're stuck there's usually that option C or D that therapy can help you navigate through and navigate yourself I think navigating through yourself is also something quite difficult to do it takes time and I think therapy does kind of help to start that process very earlier than later so I think we need to be more careful with our words because like words do hurt more than like anything and they always stuck in the person's mind like if you see and let's just talk about medical school right if you see your colleague who have failed the exam try to approach it in a way even if you're giving words of affirmation try to be considered considerate of how he feels right so say it in a nice tone say it in a nice way and if he says that I'm feeling that way tell him it's okay to feel that way you don't need to tell him oh don't be sad it's fine no if it's not fine you know if he says it's not fine just don't keep telling him it's fine and that's the process okay just be there to support him because I personally like a beloved ones feelings and how they go through actually has an effect on me as well and the majority of time this is the case I feel like I taught myself how to deal with the negative emotions and stress but when I see someone that I like or love struggle that has lot of effect on my mental health do you guys agree definitely absolutely yeah maybe we could ask a bit about what did you notice in and you could talk about yourself or others around you who've clearly reached that threshold of possibly even being diagnosed with depression according to dsm5 do you to be honest I don't think that a close friend of mine came to me and told me that he was diagnosed with depression I know that they've been diagnosed with anxiety and I told them ways that I can cope with anxiety but I told them that my ways of coping with anxiety could be could be useful to you but it should not be always the case so I told him ways to cope with anxiety and stress and for example if something is really making you anxious try to speak to it to someone that you trust and it's important to speak to it to someone that you trust because if you speak to it the wrong person how you feel will be out there so always go for the people that you trust and yeah try to have the meditation techniques like yoga or praying like I personally seek prayers and I always like try to speak with you know my God and I feel like it's really useful to have faith in this kind of situations yeah everyone deals with his own way and they have my own techniques of dealing with s yeah and Bash brought up something very important journaling want to talk a little about that yes I think I've spoken about this to my friends and they've always found upon it they're like why would you want to look back at what you've been through but I think it's a moment for you to reflect and look back at your growth and that's really important like I remember my first year I journaled a lot and right now I look back at those days and I'm like I've really overcome a lot and it's a very reassuring to look back at it and see how much growth I've experienced over the years and it is not it's definitely difficult to put down your feelings in a book but you can do it and it definitely does it's a safe space like it's a really safe space and it's really I truly encourage it for people who struggle to speak to someone it's definitely a medium that works yeah so we've my mic is hopefully back working but it is back we we've touched on a lot of great points I think to answer that question that which was you know what are some effective coping strategies we talked a lot about finding support groups journaling meditating or prayer finding hobbies and other communities of others that you can confide in of course seeking professional help with therapy now there's another interesting question that I saw in the chat I do want to bring up it's for those which all of us have done some clinical rotations is how do you establish boundaries you know the person said that they feel like they worry too much about the patients they see and they know that's part of the job but then they want to navigate this they asking how to navigate this I do want to say before I answer this question is if you feel like you're worrying about your patients and you're caring about them that's on the right track that's exactly what you want to be in this profession for to show that care so that's not something you should be ashamed of or feel like you need to hide it's something that you should embrace it shows that you're a great clinician first of all but it's definitely something you know each patient you see especially when they deteriorate or things like that that can pick at you sometimes so I want to see how you guys navigate around this definitely difficult and I think it has taken a toll on me at times seeing sick people has definitely taken a toll on me over the years but the way I navigate is looking at the bright side of everything and also like extending my regards and prayers to them not necessarily directly but personally like U during my private moments I have moments where I just like say a little prayer for them and I just try to keep professional in a sense just keep the hospital away from home but that's it's very important just to not let it have negative effect on you so just setting the boundary to leave work at work and come home and try to like find a hobby that would let you forget about what you went through at work or so yeah I totally agree I feel like it's a two-way street so whatever happens at work you should leave it at home and whatever happens at home or your private life you should leave it at work and they always think to myself like how am I going to be able to hold all of this feelings that is outside work and when I come to work as a surgeon which that's the pathway I want to pursue and always focus on work only and try to exclude everything else I feel like it's tough but it's it requires practice did you guys agree I agree 100% I agree it is it is difficult way to tackle I mean personally I can talk about one experience and I was doing my emergency rotation where it wasn't my first time but we had a patient who coded you know which means they had cardiac arrest and we had to initiate CPR for me that wasn't the first time but we had some students who were rotating that was their first rotation and that was their first experience doing CPR and then unfortunately the patient didn't it so I what we did myself and other residents and the attendings is after the scenario just talking about it just be acknowledging that it happened because from my for my first CPR Administration the patient also didn't make it and then no one approached me afterwards to ask you know how do you feel a patient just that it is a human life that for me was like first experience you know was under my hands I tried compressions and then they passed so in part of breaking that cycle I sought out to go and speak to the other students with me and the same thing the residents in that emergency department they were very lovely where we all had a huddle afterwards you know offered a moment of silence for the patient and then we also just talked about it so that's one way that I find to answer that question in the chat you know on how do you deal with your worry too much is just to talk about it acknowledge that it's there first of all and then hopefully your patients are still alive talking with them as well if they're in a bad scenario you know learning more about what their goals of care are and helping them to reach those where they still have control over their life and eventually deciding what path they go through that's how I and my team have found to navigate that situation basically yeah 100% agree talk about it that's really important very beautifully said I've noticed that teams who know each other in a more ?Music? personal level not personal I mean level yeah like knowing the names of each person who works there checking up on them talking about or I mean I've noticed that they make lots of jokes actually in I'm in the ER as well and there there's like these are one of their ways of coping humor or yes the discussing about lots of aspects that they go through throughout the day I mean let's be honest not every patient interaction is smooth not every patient interactions friendly yeah and I think that process of bottling in is probably one of the most not the but what generally one of the most harmful things you could do to yourself because that bottle is eventually going to be overfilled the bottom might break and it definitely leads to something more significant or severe if I may so with that being said we talked a lot about you know talking to others and things like that but not everyone is like that so I want to ask now you know how do you find someone who is struggling and how do you approach that and what are some science to look out for I feel like if you U like personally when I struggle with the stressors I feel like there is a drop in grades and I feel like my family have already pointed that out that if they see that something is not going on with my life they will look at my grades or they will look at my behavior and I feel like if you see a change of behavior for someone I feel you need to be worried like the change of behavior change of their appearance look out for these signs and always pay attention to what they say like there are like words of you know like they're crying for help like just yeah focus on these kind of things I believe yeah definitely giving more space to listen I think is very important now I know all of us have good intentions with sometimes telling someone man just get more sleep just do more Sports is probably not what they want to hear if that's not something I wanted to hear from my PE at that time but I could say from personal and as well as well my psychiatric rotation that some of the things you need to look out for in people and I'm going to name symptoms right now that are straight for straight in link with depression which is if you notice someone all of a sudden their sleeping patterns have changed there either have insomnia or hypersomnia and I think this is also a very big one if they started to lose interest and something that they used to like an athlete who just stopped doing sports swimmer who just stopped swimming that's something you should as it say monitor or the guilt whole self-esteem and especially if imposter syndrome is something that you know you're experiencing it could play a big role or you've seen others experience or talk about low energy the fatigue but chronic it's it this isn't like I had two hours of sleep I'm tired if anyone wakes up energized please contact me I need to know how that works but if you're generally waking up every day it's hard harder to get up and it's you see genuinely you can even talking with people is anxiety or difficult and concentration some stuff I said about great the concentration definitely goes hand in hand appetite some people decide to eat more eat less some people lose 10 kilos it really happens and pain psycho motor agitation so these mnemonics and there's definitely one more serious one but these mnemonics are Sicky caps for those studying for USM step one or step two I'm not sure which one it is for and yeah to keep an eye out on your peers these sorts of patterns yeah and like phrases such as I don't know what's the point of living and like these kind of phrases just I know sometimes people say and they don't mean it that way but always pay attention to them and ask is everything okay just pay attention don't let it just slide by so easily because we never know when someone is struggling with mental health yeah and I can definitely talk about my experience here as part of Osmosis you know as part of the o Community when I first joined as a member there was a part of my care in my education where I was slumped with exams you know I had exams from the school my O's exams and all these quizzes and there's all these extra curriculum I was trying to do at the time it was a lot to juggle and I sort of backed down from my interest you know showing interest in the community I stopped posting as much but we had my original leader at the time who was om you know he reached out to me and this you know simply asked you know how is everything going and that's when I just opened up to him it it's hard sometimes you know you will ask someone how they're doing they say I'm fine but just really maybe sometimes if you can point out what's going on you know be like I've see you haven't posted as much as what he said or he haven't been as interactive as he used to I always wanted to check in and then that's when I really opened up to him and then we discussed and we talked about coping strategy and things like that so Ely reaching out to peers if you see them can also help break that stigma break the cycle and help improve our mental health you know I just want to re touch on the osmosis values you know why programs like this are so wonderful you know we spread Joy open our arms have each other's back reach further and starting with the heart is the one of the nicest ones to have you know and also imagining more but we're nearing towards the end of our of our episode here I just want to sum up you know in general what are the management of mental health you know tips and strategies we can all put together that we can all yeah I think focusing on your physical health and the way the things that you eat because it really influences your mind and having adequate sleep because when you sleep just the same as recharging your phones right you need to recharge your bodies and in order to process these negative feelings right you need some sleep so to process them because if I don't sleep sometimes adequately I'll when I wake up I'll be more easily to be frustrated with things that happen around me and I won't think as clearly as if I have adequate amount of sleep what do you think I 100% agree prioritize your health do you think that you enjoy reach out to people these are just I think we we've covered it in our discussion the broad of it and the most of it sorry and yes I totally agree I would sorry go ahead yes okay I know you know finding things like giving yourself a reward a break time when you're making your schedules set some days off where you have days off to just relax and then also set days to catch up because inevitably we will fall behind especially when I was setting for step one I made a like a schedule to stick to I always found myself not follow not following that schedule either falling behind or not having enough time to do things that I wanted to do so I redid my schedule extended the time that I gave to do my test and I Incorporated you know several days to as catchup days within the schedule days where I just had planned off to go and do an activity to enjoy and distress and that really helped me a lot and made the exam experience much more tolerable as well yeah and speaking of exam experiences so as we all agreed this is a marathon this is not a Sprint and following failure is Success believe me if you the last thing you should be doing is you know really being tough on yourself during these times it's a good opportunity to learn it's a good opportunity to see what you could do different but I think if you're trying to give yourself a harder time for the harder time you probably already they have I think that is counterintuitive maybe the perspective of failure could be further discussed which is you know in order to and students we're all students right now we are bound to make mistakes and we're meant to learn from those and we're not defined by grades we're not defined by that criticism that one professor gave because they were just they were having a bad day it's usually a reflective reflection of them not you and with that being said I'm G to pass the floor back to you yeah I mean we've talked a lot and about mental health it's a very broad talk we've only touched on the tip the iceberg here I'd love to hear more from the participants who are tuning in live if you have any questions that we want you want to bring up or things that you want us to look at please bring that up as well as this always seek out professional help there's a lot of helplines and School resources that are out there and sometimes you just have to look so we have one a question that came in you know ways can medical students advocate for improved Mental Health Resources and support within their institutions so I'd love to hear what you guys think about that before I give my opinion I definitely think that U medical students can talk about it like I cannot stress this enough we need to speak more about mental health the struggles that we face because if we don't speak about it to the university would turn a blind eye they wouldn't know so it's important that continuously talk about it with our peers our teachers and whoever who that will listen yeah I totally agree with bash just always talk about it and make it a like a free zone environment so you can talk about these things always talk and listen talk and listen to your friends I think that's a great that's the best advice I can give what do you think oh yes sir I was going to say yeah in my school we have the student union there and one thing that we I found really helpful was so that's one way Avenue if you have a student union you can go through them but what we what they did at the time was to have an anonymous submission where you know that because that's one of the hurdles that we have is having our names attached when we talk about topics of these especially when you're bringing them up to administrator it's a stigma again that we have to break but that's one thing that we used was anonymizing our submissions and then pulling it in from the student body through the Student Union so it's a unified voice and that they can present and we demanded answers to the questions that we had and then change Came Upon you know where they redesigned some parts of the curriculum to help tackle these and also you know just provide answers on why some things are because you know there's the changes that happen and we're just confused we want to know why you know we feel it's impacting our health our mental health especially and then we don't know why these changes are happening so just trying to figure out the why and having that unified Voice through the student body was one way that we did it as medical students at my University I guess to kind of give a quick comment before we go to the next lovely question I think personal advocacy is a big thing so do talk about it I always talk about it with people if I deem relevant without shame because this is that point in time where it's time to have some changes it's time where you should be able to express what you're going through because if we're there to treat the patients we should also be there to be able to treat ourselves from time to time that's also very important so the less the more we talk about it the more we ask people how are you doing it's something I've noticed in my year group as time pass start all of us were going through tough times so we start to ask each other how are you and instead of saying good we actually got it more holistic answers and you can see a bit of a calm on the person's face when they just let someone else know how their life is going and it doesn't always have to be bad sharing good things is also great and I'd say that would be my answer to talk about it more and next question which is how can medical schools better incorporate mental health education support into their curriculum wow anyone has any answers I have to think about that we have an answer in the chat from one of our participants already you know advocating for resources Wellness campaigns destigmatized student organizations these are all things that we all touched on and as part of the curriculum you know I brought up that that topic of where you know where in the first week they had some Mental Health talk about that's point we were still way too early it was too early for us to really benefit from that talk but I think more allocating more time to update the curriculum and the way that education really is taught it it's still very old you know we have PowerPoint slides and we're just sitting there it hasn't been updated you know to what we have in 2024 where we have resources like videos through osmosis you know that's one thing that when I found about osmosis it was really it really helped me out with just understanding a lot of topics because the videos to watch are really helpful whereas a PowerPoint explaining you know homeostasis and water balance and all that ion transport it's not something a slide can really show you so that's one thing that I see that needs to be updated in curriculums yeah and also like I would recommend that it is constantly taught like every year there should be a webinar discussing it or a lecture just so that it's always a topic that people are constantly aware of and open to discuss and on that topic I just wish that when we do have these discussions in school it's not like you know a big class I think a more smaller group focused activity for these type of discussions would benefit better and there's too many people like over 50 in a lecture hall it's kind of hard to be that voice but when there's five in a small group it's much easier to bring this topic and get a voice from everyone yeah I agree I have nothing better to add than what you guys just said so definitely agree yeah so think thanks again for everyone who tuned in to this podcast any final questions and if not then we can finally R wrap up we did go a bit over time we originally planned for 45 minutes now we're 55 so I hope that's fine with everyone we want to respect your time though so thanks for all tuning in and I'll leave you just for any final comments and then we can wrap up from the looks of it doesn't seem to be but I enjoyed the talk it was though we did go overboard I felt like a lot of us had something to really put out there it's generally a personal struggle for many yeah so to be honest it's not it's not a topic to be covered in 45 minutes yeah but I think I think we did we did good crash course of mental health in 45 minutes yeah you know just talks like this if you have a friend group just talk about mental health you know just throw out your stories when we were rehearsing for the these podcasts we were bringing up all sorts of fun stories and then just talking it out again over and over again you know we're social creatures finding someone yeah love that all right well thank you very much for attending this webinar and I guess our next one would hopefully be in January if I'm not mistaken but thank you for tuning in and I guess see you next time I sound like a YouTuber now please subscribe helping current and future clinicians Focus learn retain and 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