Combating coronavirus: Online course launched to promote mental health, wellbeing in UAE

Dubai - The course is the third part of the MBRU Community Immunity Ambassador Programme.

The Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences (MBRU) has launched an online course to promote mental health and enhance wellbeing in the UAE.
Find Your Light course is launched in partnership with the National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing to help encourage compassion during these unpresented times, building on the success of the current digital learning initiatives of the MBRU. The course is the third part of the MBRU Community Immunity Ambassador Programme.
The MBRU Community Immunity Ambassador Programme, which highlights methods of prevention and containing the spread of Covid-19, has enjoyed an incredible global response with more than 910,000 people signing up to become Community Immunity Ambassadors.
The course is designed to teach specific techniques to increase self-awareness, normalise emotions and support overall wellbeing while enhancing social solidarity in tackling the outcomes of the Covid-19 pandemic and uncertainty in these times.
Throughout the course, which is structured around the philosophy that showing compassion and inclusiveness can find and ignite inner light, participants and contributors will be able to gain new skills and experiences regarding mental health and the importance of enhancing wellbeing. The course requires approximately 60 minutes to complete and will help create a recurring wave and fostering connectivity and togetherness across the world.
MBRU along with the National Program for Happiness and Wellbeing set the course to be available for free on the university's online learning platform, learn.mbru.ac.ae, and is open to participants globally, people as young as 11 can complete the course. Participants will receive a certificate upon completing the course.
Dr Amer Sharif, vice-chancellor of the MBRU, said: "Find Your Light is an extension to the efforts of the National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing and we are proud of this partnership. At the MBRU, we aim to advance health in the UAE and the region through an innovative and integrated academic health system in service of humanity, and mental health is an integral part of this system."
He added: "In these extraordinary times, it is important that we all show compassion and understanding towards ourselves and others to help spread positivity globally at a time when connectedness and togetherness proved to be what matters most. Through this initiative, we would like to encourage people to pay greater attention to their mental wellbeing and cultivate a more empathetic outlook through developing their self-awareness via evidence-based scientific methods to help people locally and worldwide exercise and spread compassion."
Aziz Al Amri, executive director of the National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing, stated the UAE has developed a holistic vision for enhancing wellbeing and overall health in society, through increasing cooperation between the National Programme for Happiness and Wellbeing and government entities and launching new initiatives to support mental health with renowned academic institutions.
He also said that launching of the online course represents another step in line with the programme's efforts to promote mental health. "The course inspires social solidarity and encourages the inherent values of compassion in society to overcome the ongoing pandemic using a unique learning track to provide innovative tools and guidance to participants and contributors to help improve social mental health."
An array of specialists in the field of mental health as well as MBRU faculty contributed in preparing and developing the course, including: Dr Ammar Albanna, assistant professor of psychiatry (MBRU), head of the Mental Health Centre of Excellence at Al Jalila Children's Specialty Hospital (AJCH); Dr Meshal Sultan, assistant professor of psychiatry (MBRU), consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist AJCH; Dr Sarah Almarzooqi and Fady Serry, assistant professors of psychology at MBRU and clinical psychologists AJCH; Dr Reem Al Gurg, director of strategy and institutional excellence MBRU, as well as Dr Nabil Zary, professor of medical education (MBRU).
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