#4 - The Power of Perspective and Grassroots Advocacy: Interview with Zafir Naseem

Today on Matters of the Mind, I continue to speak with guests attending the Active Minds Mental Health Conference, the nation’s leading conference focused on young adults and mental health. I sit down for a conversation with Zafir Naseem, a Student Advisory Committee Member for Active Minds. His passion for mental health advocacy began in high school where he helped establish an Active Minds Chapter to promote mental health awareness and action-based support for students. Zafir continued his involvement with Active Minds in college, where he is currently the president of the Active Minds Chapter at the University of Maryland.

To learn more about Active Minds, you can visit their website www.activeminds.org

Transcript

Pippa: Hello everyone, my name is Pippa Greenberg, and you are listening to my podcast, Matters of the Mind. Today I'm in Washington, D. C. attending the Active Minds Mental Health Conference, the nation's leading mental health conference for young adults. I'm currently sitting with Zafir. He is the student advisory committee member. Welcome to Matters of the Mind. 

So, can you tell us about your work and what brings you to the Active Minds conference? 

Zafir: Yeah, so I started my involvement with Active Minds back when I was in high school, actually. Started the chapter at my high school. I loved the experience there and the impact that it had, so I went on to university.

Um, didn't know if that was going to happen, if I would be able to get back with Active Minds, but the opportunity came up. So it got back into that and the person that I started the UMD chapter with, Nathan, who's also on the board right now for Active Minds was like, Hey, you should apply to the SAC. I was like, cool.

Yeah, let's do it. And then I spoke to Ivy, who's our manager and everything went from there. So now I get to have the chance to work with a bunch of other folks from across the country doing similar work, helping other chapters manage their operations and make sure that they have all their knots tied in terms of their programming and how they deliver stuff. So that's what my job is. 

Pippa: That's really interesting. So how did you start a chapter at the high school? 

Zafir: Yeah, so I had a really broken up education because I'm the first child for my parents and my parents are immigrants to this country So they wanted to make sure that I got the best education I could So they were shuffling me through private school, charter school, international school and I ended up finally arriving at public school. And the common thread that I just saw between all those different environments that unite them regardless of your color your race your background, was the fact that, you know, mental health is real, right?

And I, I like to say that it's one of those defining features of humanity that really unites all of us is the fact that we have our struggles and sometimes we're just not able to voice them. So 2016 was a long time ago and we've come a long way since then, but back then a lot of people wouldn't talk a lot about their mental health.

You could visibly see on their faces that they had something drawing them down and they wouldn't talk to their parents about it. They won't talk to anyone about it. And the effect of it is that you would see many students I've seen in many students in my high school career. They're not alive today because of it.

So I felt frustrated a little bit that the elders in the community, like the staff and stuff, weren't taking it seriously. So I decided to try to do something about it. So that's why I decided, okay, let's start a chapter and see what we can do with it. 

Pippa: That's great. It's really amazing work. Thank you. So what are you most interested in learning about at this conference?

Zafir: Ooh, there's so many things to learn, right? Just reflecting on like the first few things I learned today, the intricacy of certain terminologies. So, there was a session this morning about the very subtle distinction between perspective compared to credibility and what credibility means and how you can use shared realization, which is how your perspective on life resonates with other people and how you can use that to build credibility to bridge certain gaps in care.

Sometimes you don't think about these really small intricate things about how we perceive things human psychology and just bringing that up to a surface and you think about it. Oh, this is like really a wonderful tool that we can use to convince people to do something as small as help a kid out to get an extension on their homework assignment to something as big as, hey, we need more mental health supports at schools, right?

So there's so many different things that I'm learning. You know, being in the space. One of the biggest issues is that you get numb to everything. So you don't really start to appreciate, a lot of what's being talked about, but sometimes when you come to these places with so many amazing people and you get to hear them, um, about some of the things that they want to talk about, these nitty gritty details, you come to appreciate, oh, the effect that it can have.

So yeah, that's one of the few things I'm excited for. 

Pippa: So what aspect of mental health advocacy is most important or significant to you and why? 

Zafir: Yeah, I think grassroots is important. You'd be surprised how many people don't even know what mental health is, despite you thinking that we've come this far along.

So I'm a Muslim, right? So I spend a lot of time in like my faith center on campus. So I was there and some people got to know that I do work for Active Minds, they're like, oh, what's Active Minds? It's like, oh, it's, you know, a mental health advocacy organization. It's like, what's mental health? And I'm like, oh, so I had to explain it from the ground up, like, hey, you know, you get stressed out with homework, right?

So just think about that. Sometimes on a chronic level, to the point that it's infringing upon your life, that you're unable to do things, that's just one small aspect of mental health, right? And then people start to understand. So that's one of the things I still appreciate about mental health, Advocacy, even though we think it's, you know, we're kind of past that and we're starting the new chapter, but there's plenty of people out there that we never talked to or had the opportunity to interact with that still don't know exactly what that is.

And we kind of model it as well, like, what does practicing self care look like? What does practicing taking care of yourself look like? What does looking out for other people while looking out for yourself look like? What does community mental health look like? That's the part about mental health advocacy that I like.

Pippa: It's really surprising when you said that people you're talking to had to ask you what mental health was, because I do know a fair amount of people who tell me, Oh, you know, I've been feeling like this way for a very long time, or I've been having this for a very long time. I'm thinking, well, have you ever thought about maybe it could be anxiety or depression, OCD?

And they're like, what? I like, I thought everyone gets this. So, yeah, I understand how that is.

So, is there any advice that you would like to share for those struggling with mental health challenges or for anyone hoping to become a mental health advocate? 

Zafir: Yeah, I mean, I'm sure everyone's heard the stuff that everyone says is to reach out and stuff like that, and that is 100 percent something that you should do if you're thinking that your mental health is getting a little out of whack and you need someone to recalibrate it for you.

Definitely reach out for help. Professional help is important. But I think really what's just more important is that, you know, we're in this society now where a lot of us are on our little screens that are in our pockets all the time, and we feel a little bit more disconnected from reality, and as a result, we don't really think about the feelings of other people as much, like, we're able to recognize it as humans, like, psychologically, that, oh, someone is distressed or not, but do we have the capacity Or the servant leadership to go and reach out to the person and ask, Hey, are you okay? Right? So that's just one of the things I feel like I would stress is just make yourself a servant to other people. I think we really need that more than ever. We could talk about advocates, but I think we just need to start caring a lot for one another and revive that humanity that I think is a little bit kind of shoved under the rug.

Pippa: Yeah. Is there anything else you'd like to share as we wrap up this interview? 

Zafir: No, not really. Thank you very much for having me. 

Pippa: Thank you for joining. 

Zafir: Yeah, this is a really great resource that you, that you have here. So I hope a lot of people listen to it and hopefully take some of the gems that a lot of the other folks have offered.