From Trauma To Healing – Maria Odigie: The Mental Health Practitioner Helping Others ?? Life isn’t smooth sailing, sometimes it comes with tons of challenges; stress, anxiety, setbacks, disappointments, and all which greatly tend to affect our emotional, psychological, and social well-being, influencing how we think, feel, and act, as well as rubbing off on the physical. That said, The importance of mental health in our today’s world cannot be overemphasized.
Although two humans encounter same challenges, tolerance level for life stress may differ, affecting productivity, in the extreme, leads to self harm or suicide. While talking to a loved one might be a step forward in the right direction, expert assessment is key.
Maria Odigie has always been drawn towards helping others. Right from her teenage years, she was the voice of calm, the mother figure who subconsciously derived joy in helping others find calm and happy. “My passion for wanting to help people, especially young people grew from my own personal experience of being able to overcome my challenges…” She says.
In 2003 she bagged her degree – BA (Hons) Health and Social Care from the University of East Anglia. Thereafter proceeded to work as a tester in the IT sector.
But fulfillment was far, to put it in milder terms. Odigie opted out, to fulfill a bigger purpose. “Knowledge is Power” this fact an ambitious Odigie knew all too well. She threw herself into mental health research, wondering what she could do to help others in their healing journey, how she could in fact make a difference in people’s lives.
Armed with vital information she dug even deeper, taking research to the streets, she found out there was a lot of black boys who have been victimised and labelled as having mental health due to their environment and behavioural pattern. She decided to take them on in order to restore hope and faith.
While society stigmatized, labeling black kids, who had been involved in knife crimes and all sorts, forgotten cases, Maria Odigie saw differently.
Through passion, selflessness, devotion, empathy and further skills acquired through training, lives are being changed. ? #black#mentalhealth#hope
