‘Save Yourselves’ Provides Free Mental Health Counseling for Indonesians
A new online platform offers free and quick help for people suffering from mental illnesses, and runs suicide online for those in need.
People who have been dying to seek help or talk about their depression and mental illnesses, or those who know someone suffering from mental illness, can now get help through the online counseling site, Save Yourselves.
Save Yourselves is a mental healthcare platform for consultation, education, and suicide prevention. It offers free and fast help for anyone in need, as well as runs a suicide hotline for anyone who feels the need to call. Save Yourselves also aims to raise public awareness on mental health. It wants people to feel that they are not alone.
“I feel that mental health is a really important issue, and not many people are aware of it,” said Indri Mahadiraka, Co-Founder of Save Yourselves.
“When I was seeking help, I looked up online counseling and I told my stories on these sites, but I never had any feedback. So it made me think that this had to be fixed. That is how I came up with the idea to create Save Yourselves,” she said.
Save Yourselves mainly operates online through its website and LINE. They already have 2,500 followers, and around 300 people are talking to them via LINE, while a few have called their suicide hotline. Save Yourselves also has a support group. Their first event was held on March 3 at Coworkinginc Kemang, South Jakarta. During the event, they separated the participants into two groups, each group featured a psychologist who listened and gave them advices after the participants shared their stories.
“It is a bit unexpected, I was surprised that 24 participants turned out – we had arranged for a maximum of 25 people to make it more intimate. I think it was a success because some of the participants actually came to me, held me, and said that we had saved their lives, and that was really something for me,” said Indri.
Indri also said that the feedbacks from the participants were surprising and they said they looked forward for the next event.
You can reach Save Yourselves at LINE@ @VOL7047H or visit www.saveyourselves.org. Follow them their Facebook page.
Camely Arta is undergraduate student majoring in Management who is passionate about journalism. She spends way too much of her time binge-watching on Netflix, and takes pleasure in Mexican food occasionally. Find her on twitter at @bunnnicula.
Read Camely’s piece on the dark side of fast fashion.
