Happiness in the strangest of places

Right, time to get this blog up and running!

In 2018, I volunteered my time to work on a mental health placement in Indonesia.

For one month, I lived in a homestay, gaining over 40 hours of experience a week in the mental health sector, as well as having the weekends off to travel Bali!

So, why is this happiness in the strangest of places? Bali sounds like a dream and if you're going to be happy anywhere, you would definitely think this is the place! Well, the reason being for my title today, is that my happiness didn't come from the fun weekend activities and exploring the beautiful beaches, but rather I found my happiness on my placement, on the psych wards in Bali's only psychiatric hospital.

During this specific placement, a group of us volunteers, alongside our mentor and the hospitals nurses, ran a number of sessions that centred around creating a happy, positive and productive environment through a focus on activities such as using music, art and problem solving. Not only was there cultural differences in the response to treating mental health in Bali, but the language barrier was prominent too. We would have to find ways to translate and communicate the aims of the activities, with very little knowledge of the Balinese language. Despite the barriers, I found myself so immersed in the challenge, each week finding myself more excited to return to this specific element of my placement, with more ideas and activities that could truly bring out the best in service users!

In Bali, you may already know, there is a lack of funding and resources for individuals in institutionalised care. So our input, and the input of SLV Global volunteers, really does make the difference. In a country where the spiritual world is central to beliefs, I developed a newfound love for their use of meditation. Meditation was used at both the beginning and end of each session, this enabled service users, who usually suffered with a form of mental disorder or autism, to direct their attention and allow for a focused session ahead. Equally, ending the session with this method was important, especially when a task involved activities such as dancing, fast paced and exciting puzzles and so on, as it, again, allowed for service users to leave a session calm and at ease, as far as possible.

With these experiences and my growing knowledge, on my final week of placement, I sat in the coffee shop where we usually met before our sessions, writing up my feedback form for a session that had ran earlier in the week, and suddenly found myself feeling extremely overwhelmed! I couldn't help but cry, because in that moment, I truly realised the peak of my happiness on reflection of the incredible skills I had learnt, as well as recognising the difference our input was having on others. I had truly felt a weight lifted from my shoulders, and a sense of inner peace and a happiness like no other I had ever experienced before. And so for this experience, I will forever be grateful and reminisce over the incredible memories I created!

So I guess the point of this post really, was to acknowledge that, although it is easy to believe we are happiest when immersing ourselves in activities that will benefit us on an individual level, sometimes, it is in the moments whereby the impact of your actions reflect a change on others, and, as in my case, the acknowledgement of the difference you can make at a group level, on other people, you can really expand your feeling of happiness, knowing you have brought happiness not only to yourself, but to others.

Love as always, Lauren-Yasmin

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