The first part of our series, “Mental Health”, was first announced on Instagram on January 26th and we kicked off with Psychologist Hazal Yılmaz. It was a conference that included the experiences and thoughts that the participants wondered about mental health and wanted to share. We went through topics such as the therapy process, not marginalizing mental illnesses, and what needs to be done to raise awareness on this issue.

We held our second conference with the theme of “Psychological Illnesses” with Psychologist Umay Erdağı. Topics such as depression, anxiety and eating disorders were discussed and ideas were shared. Questions such as mood during adolescence, coping with psychological illnesses and problems in social environments were clarified.

In our conference titled “LGBTQIA+ Awareness”; the questions of the speakers on topics such as gender and sexual orientation, LGBT+ bullying were answered by Psychologist Hazal Yılmaz and ideas were exchanged. With the thoughts and voices of nearly forty participants, we took our first step to raise awareness about LGBT+. We say SPARC is colorful to reach as many people as we can, regardless of gender and orientation!

In our fourth conference, we talked about “Emotions” with Psychologist Deniz Ertan and Psychologist İdil Morin. It was an interactive conference with various questions such as the purpose of emotions, understanding these purposes, awareness of emotions, coping with intense emotions.

Psychologist Latife Özgüleryüz answered our questions in our last and fifth conference on “Neurodiversity”. Thanks to the conference where we talked about various areas such as Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD, autism, dyslexia, Down syndrome, Rett syndrome, we increased our knowledge and sensitivity. 

Thanks to the information we received at the conference series, the experiences shared and the contributions of our speakers, we have taken important steps on the path we set out with the aim of raising awareness on mental health and we will continue to move forward on this path.