“ I had got a phone call from a friend. He started to cry and vent out that the world was a bad place. He was feeling suicidal at that moment. He was standing next to the railway tracks. I had to do something, say something”…Ms Simran Luthra.
On 23rd August, 2020, the young scholars of the Kashmir Education Initiative (KEI) attended a Webinar session on Psychological First Aid by Ms Simran Luthra, named as a Suicide Prevention Controller by a leading newspaper in India. Simran, a counselling Psychologist and a Founder of the Talk Happy Therapy, a mental health initiative, had facilitated more than 100 workshops for mental health care for a diverse audience using different therapeutic techniques and saved lives of many with her expertise. She had been called to share her opinion by popular newspapers and radio channels, she has also been a guest speaker at several renowned institutions in the country.
She spoke about how psychological health initiatives still faced a roadblock in India, as most people still did not prioritize mental and emotional well-being. She began with a fun engaging Yes/No Ice -Breaker Game and asked a series of introspective questions like ‘If they had cheated in any exam?’, ‘Have you ever been called by police for breaking the rules?’, ‘Have you ever proposed to somebody?’, ‘Have you ever seen your parents getting violent?’ and so on, which saw a strong audience participation. The purpose of the opening activity was to familiarize ourselves with our emotional experiences and how feelings of pain, grief, anger and so on were universal regardless of one’s socio-cultural background, age or gender, hence establishing the idea that “You Are Not Alone”.
It formed the foundation for a ‘crisis situation’ visible during troubled scenarios of conflict, accident, shame, terror, guilt and so on. Psychological First Aid (PFA) hence became a necessity during a crisis. A crisis situation could be as diverse as a panic regarding getting good marks to witnessing a loved one die in an accident. She asserted that not everybody would need PFA and it was only in a situation where a person was unable to deal with the crisis by themselves over a course of time, would it need to be administered.
Explaining what PFA meant, she said that it was a first line support one would provide to themselves or others using the available resources at home or in the surroundings, before seeking professional psychological help. To further elaborate on what PFA was she recalled a personal anecdote on how she had received a phone call from a distressed guy who was feeling suicidal. She gave him a listening space as a friend, not as a professional to make him feel better and bring him in a stable condition. After that, he could be taken to a professional expert, once he was out of the suicidal frame of mind.
PFA would become crucial when a crisis situation would reach at its peak and triggered an emergency situation of frustration or sadness and the person would want to isolate themselves. That is when a person would be needed to be grounded or brought back to reality. Some of its warning signs and symptoms would be when a person would show excessive anger, violence, pain or sadness. She gave examples of various scenarios that could cause a crisis situation. It depended on personal experiences of loss and pain or even a family history. PFA also revolved around if you had a reliable support system of family and friends around you to help you cope with the crisis situation.
In a nutshell, she said that PFA was about understanding and helping the other person. To highlight this better, Mehlika and Farah volunteered to do a role play, enacting a situation given by Ms Simran where one had to be the giver and the other the receiver of PFA during a family conflict.
The role play performance was appreciated by the gathered audience and Ms Simran who praised how Mehlika and Farah had handled the ‘crisis situation’ and how PFA was administered. As a next step, Ms Simran shared a few Dos and Don’ts, such as giving the person space to vent out and to listen to them, allowing them to enter a physical space where they could talk easily and feel safe with the friend they were talking to, but not to compare the person’s pain with another nor emotionally manipulate them.
She talked about the 4 practical steps of Psychological First Aid- Preparing (learning more about the crisis situation, controlling one’s body behavior and dressing appropriately and so on), Looking (assessing if the person was in need of PFA), Listening (avoiding giving advice, letting the person speak their heart out about their problem) and Linking (connecting them with the right person or organization in case it was out of your expertise zone).
Additionally, she spoke about a useful method called the Grounding Technique to help somebody who was at the peak of a crisis situation and had the lost the ability to think in a coherent and rational member. It was based on using the 5 sense organs- asking them about things that they could hear/see/smell/feel/taste at that moment to distract them from the crisis situation. She also mentioned Protective Factors or positive thoughts, such as loving relatives or money that they had earned that could divert a person from their negative thoughts. She described how she used these techniques to save the life of a friend who was standing by the railway tracks and feeling hopeless.
Finally, she welcomed questions from the high schooler Scholars related to diverse mental health phenomena such as depression due to the conflict situation in Kashmir, listening to sad emotional songs during grief, motivating oneself through re-enforcement, and so on.
In the end, Ms. Simran who was visibly excited shared her enthusiasm about learning a lot from the scholars and responding to their interesting and relevant questions. She expressed her interest to engage with the students in the future and commended them for their clear communication skills and humility. The Scholars too enjoyed her guidance in a fun and interactive way and looked forward to meeting her again.