A lecture being delivered by a WEYAK official at Smaisma School.
Doha: More than 249,220 people have benefited from the services provided by Mental Health Friends Association (WEYAK) from 2014 till now.
The services include psychological counseling, lectures, training workshops and training programs. The number of training workshops for specialists, individuals and institutions has reached more than 8,000.
Mohammed Al Binali, Executive Manager of WEYAK, warned that the association is under threat of suspension. Despite the great efforts by the association in Qatar, it is facing the risk of closure because there is no financial support to continue its work.
The Association has suspended its service of giving electronic consultations through its website and electronic application until further notice.
In an interview to The Peninsula he noted “The solution is to allow us to collect donations especially the boxes which were in the malls like many other Associations and we are ready to make mental health in Qatar very good. What drives us to continue to work is our keenness to treat people who are psychologically ill and provide support to the rest so they do not get the psychological illness.”
Al Binali stressed that “The problem is that those affected by these decisions cannot raise their voices to demand the return of support to the Association, which provides them with services, because the community is still dealing with mental illness with excessive sensitivity. The sound mental health helps the patient to fight diseases, no matter how serious the disease is, such as cancer and others,” he added.
Regarding a question about the services provided by the Association, he explained that: “We organise many awareness events and visit schools and work on the importance of mental health and the importance of motivation. We advise students to play sports.”
Also, he added: “We provide psychological counseling and rehabilitation, psychological lectures for schools, training workshops for schools, training programs for volunteers, and specialized psychological programs.”
“When we started services in 2014, we faced difficulties and challenges, but today the Association has become convincing. Recently, we have signed cooperation with the Ministry of Public Health in this regard and soon with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education,” he said.
About the importance of mental health, he explained that in the developed world, it is necessary to visit the psychiatrist regularly, while here there is fear of visiting the psychiatrist.
“And that is why we gave many options of getting consultants through mobile application, or through the Association website among others. Weekly we were receiving 17 cases via the application only. Also we provide consultant service to those who like to visit us because the interview is better compared to application service.”
For institutions, he said the association offers many courses to many institutions even during the week. Each institution is dealt with according to the situation of workers and the pressures they are subjected to.
WEYAK is a voluntary civil association established in 2012 that seeks to achieve maximum mental health in the local and Arab communities through the use of different awareness methods.
The Association has many tasks, such as contributing to the rehabilitation and training of psychological counseling personnel, raising awareness about mental and social health, strengthen commitment to professional practices in mental health and psychosocial services, strengthen the monitoring and documentation of any violations or discrimination against recipients of services and promoting human rights related to mental health, among others.
On question about the history of the Association and its success , Al Binali noted that: “We began to provide our services three days a week for five hours and in response to increased demand for the services provided by the Association, we increased to five days for five hours. Our ambition was to provide services for seven days and 24 hours and we can reach this ambition.”
“Due to the shortage of funding, we reduced our services to three days for three hours. What needs to be answered is how the fundraising permit was given to many other similar associations,” he said.
