Hemofarm Foundation launched ‘A CUP OF COFFEE WITH A PSYCHOLOGIST’ project in partnership with the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade and with the support of Art Commune Dorćol Platz in April 2019, aiming to show to the public that mental health must be treated equally as physical health and that mental health issues are not a personal weakness but rather a healthcare problem that can be solved if professional support is sought on time.
To date, we have organized 35 panel sessions on different mental health and modern time issues with around 90 psychologists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists, representatives of relevant institutions and public figures who personally faced specific problems or dilemmas, as the panellists. Forty professionals have written blogs with the aim of encouraging people to talk about how they feel with their closest ones - family, friends, or seek the psychosocial support.
Talks about depression, emotional health, stress at work, burnout syndrome, mental health in a divided society, the effects of COVID -19 pandemic on mental health, mental health of young people, age-related discrimination, prejudice and stereotypes, perimenopause and menopause, love and love illusions, and the talks on many other topics have arisen huge interest of the public. After the mass shootings in the elementary school Vladislav Ribnikar and Malo Orašje and Dubona, ‘A CUP OF COFFEE WITH A PSYCHOLOGIST’ panel sessions were organized to support the citizens in overcoming the collective traumatic experience and work on preventing further retraumatization of society.
Video footages from ‘A CUP OF COFFEE WITH A PSYCHOLOGIST’ panel sessions have recorded millions of views on social networks, while just a single panel talk on the topic of ‘Depression – how it comes about and how to overcome it’ on YouTube has more than 600,000 views, which only speaks in favour of the need to talk more about mental health in the public space.
The sessions ‘A Cup of Coffee with a Psychologist’ you can listen also via podcasts.
‘With this project, we wanted to enable people living with mental health problems to know that they are not alone, and at the same time to encourage them to talk to professionals about how they feel. Our task at Hemofarm Foundation and the task of our partners was to work on prevention and motivate people with mental problems to talk to psychologists, which shouldn’t be something that we should keep quite or whisper about, but it should rather be a completely normal process of healing that can enable the person seeking help to live a productive life’, said Suzana Đorđević, Director of Hemofarm Foundation.
‘Our core activity over the course of almost 60 years has been related to scientific research. However, it was important for us to support this project because it is focused on bringing mental health topics closer to general population. The importance of this event is even greater having in mind that mental health problems in this region are often followed by stigma and stereotypes, and many people are reluctant to talk about them or seek professional help’ - Ivana Stepanović Ilić, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, and former Head of Institute of Psychology.
‘At the time of establishing Dorćol Platz, it seemed sufficient to offer to citizens a different and ‘healing’ cultural, artistic and entertainment program compared to the one they are exposed to every day. In the meantime, we have realized that it is not enough and that we all sometimes need professional support in order to overcome increasing life hardships. We are grateful to Hemofarm Foundation for embracing our initiative and conceiving, together with Institute of Psychology, such a socially beneficial project. It is our honour and pleasure to be a part of it’ – Veselin Simonović, one of the founders of Dorćol Platz.