One of my favorite experiences my job at publishing has given me, and probably the one I'm most proud of, is volunteering. It also involved something very close to my heart: reading for kids and young people at a psychiatric hospital. Having dealt with anxiety and depression changed the way I see mental health and made feel me more committed to it. That's why this time I want to write about my experiences there.

THE INTRODUCTION 

When they took us for the first time to the hospital we were all excited and nervous. The staff gave us a presentation and the regulations that we had to follow. We also had a tour of the place so we could see where we would be working. Since is a place meant for kids it looks a lot like a school, it has a lot of colors, rooms for activities, playgrounds. But when you enter the dormitories the reality sinks in, this is a place where kids have to stay for treatment away from their lives.

 

They are divided into girls and boys and the boys are also divided into two sections, mental health, and addiction recovery. The dynamic was that every week a small group of us would come to read and have activities related to the book in two groups for an hour each. The publishing made the donations of the books for the kids and the hospital.

 

Usually, we'd all take turns reading, us the volunteers and also the kids so everyone could participate. A very common thing was to find at least one kid that said didn't want to read saying "is boring". We never forced them but as we read with the rest, they'd change their minds and slowly join. I remember one that started that way and we found out it wasn't that he didn't like to read, but that he didn't know how to read out loud very well. We made sure he didn't felt embarrassed or pressured and little by little he started to get more confident. At the end of the session, he said he enjoyed it and wanted to finish the book. 

 

There were also kids that really liked reading and we talked with them about their favorite books and we saw how happy they'll get when we gave them the books. In one of the times, they asked us about our jobs at publishing, "I work in the digital department. My job probably didn't exist when I was your age, which wasn't that long ago," I told them, "but the world is constantly changing so your job could end up being something you hadn't anticipated".

 

The activities we prepared were things like drawing, coloring, writing their own endings. In these activities, you could get a glimpse at some of the kids' stories. Every now and then a kid would even tell you about why they were there, other times you'd see their wrists and figure it out. A lot had happened to them at such a young age.

MY CONCLUSION

Been a volunteer at a psychiatric can be heartbreaking. There's also the way mental health has been treated over the years, the misinformation about it has made some people scared of the patients so not everyone would go for it. I'm not gonna lie, sometimes there would be patients with odd behaviors, but they were suffering with a sickness. The first time I went I imagined how hard it could feel like being a kid going there, away from your family, friends, home, even your own bed. And harder since they were going through those difficult times.

 

Every time I went it was a different experience, never knowing how it was going to go. But all of them were very good and left me, not only with a feeling of purpose, but also with a lot to reflect on and to learn. Even when it was so far away and the commuting was tiring, I liked volunteering there. I felt like what we did was perhaps something very small, but their doctor would tell us how he saw an improvement in their treatments and kids would say they liked it and thanked us for going. And that made it worth it.