All Posts

Coffee and Puzzles brought together exactly what its name promises: unwinding, cognitive challenges, and a little personal reflection, all inside a relaxed, café-style setting. The event wove together coffee, puzzles, games, personality activities, psychological assessments, a reading corner, and a book showcase, all pointed toward the same goal: helping participants slow down and get a little more self-aware. The event set out to: · Promote mental wellbeing through engagi

Who Cares for the Caregivers? Facilitated by Theraspace and Imaara, the Therapist Safety Session carved out something therapists rarely get themselves which is an open, reflective space to talk honestly about the personal and professional weight of working in mental health. After introductions, the lead facilitator opened with an energy check-in, grounding the room in the present before laying out the guidelines that would keep the conversation respectful and meaningful throu

Facilitated by DEMCARES, SCARF, this session offered participants a grounded, human introduction to dementia: what it actually is, how it reshapes lives, and where dementia care is headed. After a welcome and a round of introductions from the moderators, participants introduced themselves too, setting an interactive tone from the start. The discussion opened by turning the question back on the room: what did participants already understand about dementia, and what did they im

Conducted by Rooted Connections and CHI for Trauma and Wellbeing, the Trauma Healing Workshop brought together participants for a session that was as emotionally demanding as it was carefully held, one centred on healing, lived experience, and the ways societal systems shape individual wellbeing. Introductions here went beyond names. Participants were asked to describe how their bodies typically feel upon waking each morning, and the honesty of the responses set the tone for

The Theatre Workshop, facilitated by Agai – Theatre of Voices, marked the beginning of the workshop sessions at Adaiyalam 2026. The session commenced with an introduction by the emcee, followed by a warm welcome from the facilitators. Participants were first asked to set their belongings aside and spread out comfortably around the room, creating an open environment that encouraged movement, interaction, and participation. The facilitators began with a series of icebreaker act

Music therapy sits at a curious intersection (part science, part art) and few people embody that combination as naturally as Simran Ayanna, founder of Airaanah and a postgraduate in Medical Music Therapy. This session marked her first big outing with the initiative, and it showed in the best way: careful, warm, and genuinely experimental. The session opened with something deceptively simple: an exploration of body percussion, the idea that any part of the body capable of prod

Therapy sessions rarely come with a syllabus on taxes and investments, which is exactly the gap Mr. Vinay (Partner, ABCD) set out to fill. The focus stayed practical throughout: money, saving, and why accounting matters for psychologists running their own practice. The session opened with the fundamental language of money like income, expense, asset, and liability. Anything spent in the process of earning is an expense, and from there the discussion moved into the basics of p

The Mental Health Youth Summit opened with the MC welcoming the audience and introducing the day's keynote speaker, Manojj Dhinakaran. The Molecular Cost of Masking Manojj's keynote, titled "The Molecular Cost of Masking," began with a simple but loaded question: what does it actually mean to mask? He described it as the everyday act of hiding emotions and suppressing what we feel — something so common it's almost invisible. But he pushed the conversation further, asking whet

The morning began the way most House of Hibiscus events do, with Aksheyaa Akilan, the founder, walking the room through what "Adaiyalam" actually means before anything else happened. Last year's fest had centred on decolonisation. This year, she said, the theme had shifted somewhere quieter and harder to pin down: the illusion of normality. Not decolonising a system this time, but questioning the word "normal" and everything people have quietly bent themselves into shape for

What if the care you’ve been seeking was never far away—just woven into daily life, passed down through songs, stories, rituals, and...

கலாச்சாரமே ஒரு தேசத்தின் ஆன்மா, அதுவே நம்மை நாமாக ஆக்குகிறது நமக்கான அடையாளத்தையும் தருகிறது. — Culture is the soul of a people. It...

Bridging the Gaps in Mental Health for a Stronger Tomorrow Mental health is no longer a taboo topic. More people than ever understand its...