 This is the way to do it. This is the way to do it. Self-realization is a challenging task, especially for the youth. But once you discover it, you can conquer any mountain or valley that you come across. Let's hear Gloria Achen. Karibusana to the show. What can you tell us? What was the inspiration to become a freelance psychologist? I started freelancing like two years ago. I used to work in a hospital setup. And at times we could go to the medical wards aside from the psychiatric unit. And most of the patients at the medical wards were not really aware of issues to do with their mental issues. And they could relate psychological issues to physical problems. And I decided to go out and into the community and do more of awareness. And also go and reach out to those particular people who are not able to access the mental health care. And also who are not really into, who do not really have knowledge about what was really going on in their mind. Okay. So speaking of going out, how do you go about your day-to-day task as a freelance psychologist? I network a lot, one thing. And I also partner with other organizations in getting clients. So other organizations refer clients to me. And at times I do facilitation or trainings for staff of other organizations. So if they have other clients coming for checkups or any other issues related to what they are doing in their organizations, they are able to refer the clients to me. And I also work with other institutions like Kisumu Remand Home. And Kisumu Remand Home, they have mostly social workers. So I come in as a counselor and I offer my services to the children. And I also train the social workers. Let's go back to the basics. Why psychology? Is it something you've always wanted to do or something you did out of experience? Okay. I am very familiar. I have always been familiar with issues to do with mental illnesses. From a very young age, I have grown around depression. And I also have a sibling who has neurodevelopmental disorder. So it's something that I grew wanting to find solutions to. And when I finished high school, that is what I knew I wanted to do. But at that time it wasn't really clear that it was psychology that I was focusing on. So I had to ask a lot of questions. And when I narrowed down to each, people used to tell me that unataka kudil na machi zi. And it was also stigmatizing. Because if someone tells you something like that, and that is the same thing that you see in your own house. So it was not really a good introduction into it. But I decided that that is what I wanted to do. And that is something that I am doing right now. That's interesting. And speaking of it being at the background of your family, didn't you have some conflicting ideas that what if I cannot move on from whatever I have seen? Yes, there was. And I have also been diagnosed with it, with depression. And I felt that it might reach a time that I would not be able to serve as or how I wanted it. But through the experience that I have, through the whole journey, through the whole experience, we also have support in psychology. So I don't have to deal with things alone. And I also have a counselor. My counselor has a counselor and it's just like that. Yes, so it's a chain. Yeah, it's a chain. So if I have a lot of clients and I feel like I'm being drained, I just go for support. And then in support, they deal with my issues plus the issues that I have in the field. And at the end of the day, I feel better and in a position to help someone else in also feeling better. That is so strong of you considering that you have your own issues. Now you're dealing with someone else's and it's so selfless. I would love to congratulate you on that. And speaking with you, you talked about something called Sulevmo. Let's talk about that. What is it and what does it entail? Sulevmo is an organization right now and we are close to celebrating one year. And the whole background of Sulevmo is that I've gained experience from working in other organizations and you cannot solve everything as one person. So you must come together and find solutions together. So I'm a co-founder and we came together as different counselors and social workers in different professions to come together and bring holistic solutions. So if you come to the organization, you'll find we have dancers, we have drama teachers, we have so many different people doing different things. But at the end, we are focusing on mental wellness. You've spoken about having dancers and a variety of activities. Are these ways in which you used to address mental issues as Sulevmo or how do you address the issues? The dancers, we have a drama department in the organization and we use this drama and music and dance as a way to tell stories and also to offer comfort and also to spread hope. Because when you listen or you watch what we are doing, most of the narrations come from the stories of the children and the stories of the youths and also even the children at times write their own scripts. So what we do is we actualize their scripts. And do you have a specific group that you work exclusively with? Yes, I work with the children Remand Home. And in the Remand Home, there are two types of groups. There are children who have committed offenses and children who are under care and protection. And we offer counseling to them and we are there twice a week. And we have days that we do counseling, we provide our own counselors to the children. And we also have the drama and the music and poetry and dance with them. And that is meant to engage them, to rehabilitate them and also for them to... It's not easy for them to open up to us. But if we provide that environment, it is easy for them to tell us exactly what they are going through and why they are there. And we also take part in providing solutions to them and we take them home at times when their cases are done in court, things like that. So we make sure if we are being part of that child's life, we don't only solve the solution at the Remand Home. We also extend the support to where ever he came from. So we also go back to their homes and do counseling. We do family therapy, we do reunification and we make sure by the time we leave that child back home, we are leaving that child in a safer environment. So why the decision to work with the children at a Remand Home? You could have worked with any other group in the society but you decided to let us go in here. At the Remand Home, there is no formal education. That is one. And before we joined them, they relied on themselves and also other organizations and other well-wishers to come and help them rehabilitate the children. And when we went and started working with them, we decided to offer other things that were not in their curriculum or whatever they were doing in the Remand Home. So just wanted to uplift the children and we just wanted to make them aware that they were not alone and then give them hope and also make them recognize that they still have another chance to life. And it does not just end there and they can also just live through the process and work with us and go through the rehabilitation, the cancelling and still come out and go back to their homes and continue from where they left. We also work with the children in the community as a preventive measure so that they don't end up in the Remand Home. So what kinds of things do you do with them as a preventive measure? It's more of awareness creation and we not only talk to the children, we also talk to the parents. So at times we hold conversations with the children, at times we hold conversations with households and when we are targeting a community, at times it's all need basis. Like another organization can be doing a certain program in that community and then reach out to us and tell us so this community and the children or the youth in this community are at risk. So we go there and then we make up a program that we know it will be of help into that community. And as a psychologist, what do you think are the specific problems that become so extensive that children have to go to the Remand Home? And how can we get a solution to them? Okay, most of the issues that come up are issues to do with neglect and neglect maybe from parents or from the community also because community play a big part in raising a child and there's also issues with poverty because so many children who come to the Remand Home don't have a very, let's say good for moral education. Some are up to 16 or 18 and they've reached class four, class three. And most of the children also in the Remand Home are not from Kisumu, just a few of them are from Kisumu. So most of the children come from Nakuru and then most of them are from West time and they rarely have good formal education. And there's also a lot of issues to do with peer pressure, a lot of issues to do with adolescent because the other ones that are brought through care and protection are the ones that might have been minus in a relationship. So and how has that journey been so far? Since you started being that you have experienced depression and you are now a psychologist, how has that journey been so far? And being part of Sulevmo, how has it helped? Okay, the journey has been challenging. Yeah, it's really challenging because the more I've been learning about mental health and mental wellness and all my journey through psychology, it's been really eye-opening to me because I get to know myself, to know my strengths and also to know my weaknesses and to know how to deal with them. And I was not diagnosed with depression before I knew about, before campus. In fact, it was during my campus years and it was because I was more aware of things that were happening to me or around me. And that is when it happened and I got, I went downhill but through support of my teachers and other counselors, I am where I am and transferring from the hospital setup to the freelance setup is also stressful because we work more hours and you have to be somewhere, you can't just stay at home and receive clients. So I have to be in activities, in events, I have to organize, I have to be almost everywhere at the same time. So it's stressful. It's so many hours and a lot of determination and you also need a lot of support because you can't do it on your own and you also have to start somewhere because I started doing pro bonoak and that is how I got clients. And right now, it's still challenging. I have not really, it's a journey. In an African setting, mental health is taken so lightly. Why do you think this is? I explained this by just describing a scenario. We had a research, I was taking part in a research that we did a few months ago and we're dealing with the youth and the children and not all of them really understood what mental health was. And as much as we would like to see ourselves as very aware of mental health issues, it was really clear at that point that we have moved forward but we've actually left a lot of people behind. So the children, there's some people who could try and explain by just naming illnesses or conditions. So someone could tell you stress, someone could even say pressure because that is what they hear their parents saying. Nikuna pressure. And it's actually stress or depression. So we, our community, we are not really aware of what is mental health and how we can come together and help each other. And all I, what I got from the whole discussion was that we really need to go back from the start and start afresh. Okay. How can we do this? We just need to go back to the basics and go back to the community. We do very good outreaches and awareness in schools, in communities because if I empower someone, one person from a community, that person is able to go back and empower that community. So we just work with the people we have, with the resources we have, but go back to the roots and start all over again. Because even right now, the people who are a little bit aware also get a lot of things mixed up. So if you talk to them about mental health and mental illnesses, they're different, but they're not able to distinguish them. Okay. Briefly tell us the difference. The difference. So mental health is the overall well-being of an individual. So it's the physical, the social, the psychological, the economic. It's every aspect in your life. So you can't be well if one thing is off. So it's everything that a human being needs in order to be okay. That is mental health. And mental illnesses now are the conditions associated with mental health. So if you tell someone mental health, someone will tell you stress or depression, but it's not really that. So the illnesses are now the conditions that are associated with mental health. Well, I also did not, I just realized I did not know the difference. And speaking of not understanding exactly what is happening, most people suffer in silence, quote unquote. So as a psychologist, what is the remedy for this? People are suffering in silence. And okay. The issue was also brought up on the world's mental, men's mental health day. It was a few months ago. And what we realized by then is that as a community, we don't have a talking culture. And the talking culture came from when we were young. The example when, let's say a boy fights with another person and then he comes back crying. They'll tell him, be a man. Yeah. Yeah. And the talking culture was not embraced when we were young. And it was not also to the boys, but it was also to an extent to some communities, in some communities to some extent, also the girls did not embrace the talking cultures. So we don't have that in our community. We don't have that in some of the families. And if we want to be somewhere or if we want to be able to bring interventions that are to help our community in tackling mental health issues, that is where I think we should start. And also the talking culture needs a collective effort because if I decide to talk to you about my problem and then you go and tell someone else, tell someone else, then you're not encouraging me to come to you when I have a problem. So it's mental health issues. It's not something that only one person can solve. So we need to come together as a community in the different relationship that we have, whether it's your partner, your friends, your sisters. And if we are encouraging people to talk, to open up and to find solutions, then we also need to encourage offering safe spaces to people and also listening to people in order to make them open up and you can advise or you can decide to find help from someone else. And going back to self-realization, what can you tell the youth, a youth member who is trying to find their footing, say in career or business, but they don't know what to do as you have done? They need to recognize who they are first of all. And if you know who you are, then you know your strengths, you know your weaknesses and you know when you need support and how you can need support. So when it comes to the youths who are still finding themselves, you cannot offer something that you don't know. So it really requires you to actually learn not only yourself, but you learn your community and who you're working with, who you're dealing with. And it requires a lot of research also. And when you actually learn about who you are and how far you can go and how your challenges affect you personally, then it is also easy for you to offer a service or to help someone else or to start something that is very sustainable because you're able to just listen to yourself. Thank you so much for coming to the show. I have learnt the difference between mental health and issues and mental... Yeah, I'm still confused, but I'm learning. But what you're doing is really uplifting. It's to live more. And having to listen to someone else's problem while you're going through your own is a sign of strength. I will commend you for that. So thank you so much. If you know who you are, you're able to identify your strengths, you're able to identify what you need and when you need help from someone else, it is easy to look for it and the solution will come to you. See you next time. This has been Youth in Action.