K S LO ENGLISH

Have you ever heard about depression? How much do you know about it? Last week, I attended a mental health first aid standard course offered by Mental Health First Aid International to learn more about different mental health diseases. In this article, I will share with you more about depression. 

What is depression? 

Depression is a mental disorder which affects patients’ lives and their interpersonal relationships. Patients usually have depressed moods which last for at least two consecutive weeks. They usually are not interested in any activities or hobbies because they do not have the motivation to engage in the activities. Sometimes, they even feel guilty when they believe that they are useless. Some patients who suffer from serious depression may think of committing suicide. 

What should I do if I have a friend who has some depression symptoms? 

You should remember that you are not a doctor who can offer medicines to your friends. However, you should introduce some resources to them. The Hospital Authority has a website which includes all the psychiatric day hospitals (website: click here). Apart from telling them to visit the psychiatric day hospitals, you can also provide a list of clinical psychologists offered by the Hong Kong Psychological Society for them (website: click here). 

What should I do if my friends are unwilling to see a psychiatrist? 

It is understandable that your friends may be unwilling to see a psychiatrist, especially when people have prejudice over some depression patients. However, the earlier the intervention takes place, the higher the chance of recovery. You can convince them to seek professional help with the right attitude. First, you should be less judgmental and accept your friends’ depression symptoms. When you persuade them, you should let them talk about their feelings first. Then, it would help if you were genuine and empathetic. Instead of expressing your opinion, you should let your friends understand that you are trying to step into their shoes. When they feel your sincerity, they are encouraged to seek professional help. 

How can I help my friends apart from providing some resources to them? 

The treatment of depression is a long journey. Unlike infectious diseases, which you can recover quickly, depression takes a lot of time to recover. You can encourage them when they feel depressed and hopeless. You can also remind them that life is full of hope and they can finish the whole treatment. 

My friends tell me that they want to commit suicide due to depression; what should I do? 

You should stay calm first. Then, you should ask them if they have any planning to commit suicide. For example, you can ask them when and where they are going to commit suicide. Also, you should ask them if they have any past experiences of committing suicide. The more details they tell you about their suicide plans, the higher risk for them to commit suicide. When you know the time and places where they are going to commit suicide, you can call the police and get to the places as soon as possible. When you approach them, you should let them express their feelings and thoughts. Meanwhile, you should not say something like “Be positive!” and “Everything will be all right.” Those sentences allow them to have more negative thoughts in their minds. You should keep accompanying them before the police officers arrive. 

In conclusion, depression is a mental disorder which affects patients’ daily lives. When your friends have some depression symptoms, you should offer some resources for them to seek professional help and encourage them to finish the whole treatment. If they want to commit suicide, you should accompany them and call the police. Now, you know what to do when your friends have depression, right? 

Have you ever come across the term “counseling” in school? How much do you know about peer counseling? I have participated in a two-days peer counseling workshop. In this article, I will tell you more about peer counseling. 

 1. What is peer counseling? 

Peer counseling emphasizes using helping skills with a non-judgmental attitude, along with knowledge about human growth and mental health, to counsel people who are our equals- peers in age, status, and knowledge (e.g., our classmates). Instead of solving peoples’ problems, peer counseling tries to help them find their solutions and encourage people to take action. To be straightforward, peer counselors help people to help themselves. They could help people clarify their thoughts and feelings and explore various options and solutions. 

2. What are the basic qualities of being a counselor? 

Some of you may ask if you are suitable to be a counselor. To be a counselor, you need to have skills, knowledge, and attitude. It is easy for you to acquire skills if you practice more. You also need to know about human development and counseling. Even if you have gained professional knowledge, you need to have a positive attitude (e.g., having a high EQ, sensitive to feeling, caring, patient, curious, and having the capacity to tolerate pains, uncertainty, and boredom).  

3. How does a counselor think about clients? 

Counselors meet different clients every day. They believe that people from different family backgrounds and experiences have different stories. Instead of only focusing on what they say, they also have to lead the clients to think differently. Some clients believe that their experiences (i.e., their stories) are bad, so they often think negatively. Peer counselors talk to them and help them find another perspective to see their whole stories. Eventually, people can find solutions to their problems when they come up with a new perspective. 

4. Can we use those helping skills under any condition? 

We should use helping skills under three core conditions: empathy, respect, and genuineness. We need to respect people from different backgrounds. To achieve empathy, we should make the people feel that they have been understood. To respect them, we should listen to others’ problems attentively without imposing our own opinions. If we are not able to do so, we should kindly refer the person to someone who can. To show our genuineness, we should build trust with others by being authentic, truthful, sincere, open, and clear. 

5. How to deal with silence during counseling? 

Sometimes people are unwilling to talk about themselves during counseling. In that case, we need to use non-verbal skills such as observation skills. First, we need to focus on kinesics (e.g., body movements, gestures, facial expressions, eye behavior, and posture) and paralinguistics (e.g., the ‘how’ of the message, voice level, pitch, and fluency of speech). Then, we need to concentrate on the cause of silence and their feeling. After that, we have to use other skills to reopen the verbal interaction (e.g., paraphrasing, questioning, and reflection on feelings). 

In conclusion, being a counselor does not mean that you need to help people solve problems directly. Instead, a counselor has to help people to help themselves by thinking about their stories from a new perspective. A counselor should be respectful, genuine, and empathetic. During counseling, it is important to break the silence by observing, focusing on the cause of silence, and reopening the verbal interactions. 

My dog, Captain, used to be a stray dog. 6 years ago, he met me when I was on my way to the school summer camp with mum. He was just following us until my mum said, ‘Let’s adopt this dog’ the only thing I remember is that the dog was cute, but dirty.

The dog then became one of our family members. I remember when I was still a primary school student, every time I came back home, the first one to greet me was Captain. Whenever I was doing homework, he would stay with me until I was done. I still remember his ridiculous look when he hung his tongue in his mouth with his saliva dropping out.

Captain seemed to have a human like sense, when I finished my homework, he always looked at me with sorry eyes. When I saw this, I knew that he needed to have a walk or eat. I always would pick up the dog leash enjoying the walk with Captain.

When I was primary six, I needed to move to Hong Kong and prepare for middle school. ‘Its fine my friend, I’ll come back soon!’ After saying that, the pandemic spread in Hong Kong. I couldn’t go back home to visit Captain. The only chance I could see him was from the picture that dad sent to me.

Captain started to get sick while I was away. Seeing Captain getting thinner and thinner, I was so sad watching him not moving anymore but I couldn’t do anything.

On November the 6th, the day after I finished my final exam, I went home happily. When I got home, I received a call from my dad, he said that Captain just passed away. My joy of finishing the exam disappeared, and I began to cry, as if I had never felt so sad before…

Today, I still have the photo of Captain on my desk. Whenever I get tired of studying, I look at Captain. He seems still beside me, his eyes seem to encourage me. If one day I sneeze, that must be Captain thinking about me.

Captain, thank you.

We might know about “Time Travel” from films, TV series or science fiction books, like Back to the Future, Avengers: Endgame… But, what is “Time Travel”? Can we really travel in time? In this article, I will look at this question.

According to its name, “Time Travel” means travel to the past or future. It was introduced by British author Herbert George Wells in his science fiction book The Time Machine in 1895. After knowing its meaning, is time travel feasible? In my opinion, it is impossible to come true in the twenty-first century. There are three reasons to support my opinion.

First, there is a famous paradox called “Grandfather Paradox”. “Grandfather Paradox” is a paradox that was proposed by French science fiction author René Barjavel in his 1943 novel Le Voyageur Imprudent. “Grandfather Paradox” goes something like this, if you successfully go back to the past, and kill your grandfather, this means that your father will not be born. If your father was not born, you will not be born too, if you did not have a birth, then nobody will kill your grandfather.

Second, “Wormhole” is an object that can possibly make time travel come true. The theory of a “Wormhole” was proposed by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1930, and is called “Einstein-Rosen Bridge” So, what is wormhole? Wormholes are tubes connecting distant regions of the universe. Dark matter keeps the wormhole exit open. Wormholes could link parallel universes to baby universes and offer the possibility of time travel. A wormhole could also be the tunnel connecting a black hole to a white hole. Wormholes have been proposed for about 92 years, yet scientists have not found any evidence of them yet. Some scientists say that wormholes might be in the microscopic world, like quantum entanglement. The relationship between wormholes and quantum entanglement is “ER=EPR”, ER refers to Einstein-Rosen Bridge (Wormhole), EPR refers to Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox (EPR Paradox). “What is microscopic world?” someone might ask. Nowadays, physicists divide the world into a macrocosm world and a microscopic world, macrocosm world means the world that we live in now, microscopic world means the world where molecules, atoms, electrons are. In order not to make this paragraph too long and too hard to understand, if you are interested in wormholes, please check my next article.

Third, according to relativity, the faster the speed, the slower the time. So does it mean that if you are fast enough, you can “travel further”? And let me apply another famous paradox called “Twin Paradox”. “Twin Paradox” goes something like this, there were two brothers. The older brother boarded a spaceship for a long journey into space, the speed of the spaceship is near the speed of light, while the younger brother stayed on Earth. As a result, when the older brother returned to the Earth, he found that the age of his younger brother was older than him. This result is inferred by Special Relativity (Time Dilation) that is what we started with “the faster the speed, the slower the time”. So logically, does not the older brother achieve time travel? At this point, someone will say, “I thought you said time travel would never happen in the twenty-first century. Why are you now saying that time travel can come true with Time Dilation?” Yes! That is true, but do you think we can develop spaceships in the twenty-first century that can travel near the speed of light?

Time Travel, is very attractive and lets people think they can go back and change something that failed them, make up for the mistakes they made before… But the thing that I want to say is, the chances of time travel being possible in our generation are almost zero, so why don’t we cherish every moment, every second that you spend your time with your family and friends, so that you will not have any regrets in the future. Let me end this article with a Latin sentence that my English teacher told me before: Carpe Diem (Seize the day.).

Growing up is like a journey of getting to know your true self. Along the way, we may sometimes get lost and not recognise who we truly are. However, if we can hold tight to our faith and not be threatened by all the setbacks in life. We can eventually find the meaning of life. For me, the first breakthrough came when I kicked off my secondary school life.

Being a girl with low self-confidence, I thought I was inferior to others. In primary school, I was labelled as a coward and loser. I can still remember very clearly how other people played pranks on me. I always received rubbish in my locker or some wasted paper with words like “You are a loser” written on it. These bullies were like swords that hurt me ruthlessly. Therefore, I seldom talked to others. My only hope was that I could grow up quickly and get promoted to a secondary school which could possibly be a heaven to me.

My wish has come true very soon. After I enrolled in my current secondary school, I joined the Archery Team by chance. Then, I started my first practice of archery. The first time I saw the arrow hit the bullseye, I was fascinated by it! I could hit the target so easily. I never knew I could do it. I fell in love with archery from that very moment! Since then, I practice hard every day. Throughout the process, I realised that all I needed to do was to compete with myself. I tried to improve my archery skills by correcting my wrong postures and adjusting my mentality. I have learnt that in archery I don’t have to compare myself with others. Archery has brought me confidence. My only enemy is myself. I have finally found my passion for life.

My first attempt in archery competition came very soon after my first practice. I admitted that I was as timid as how my primary schoolmates described me. But I kept telling myself ,‘I am not a loser!’. When the competition started , I felt that I have gained a lot of emotional power, that made me become more powerful and confident. I tried to perform my very best to complete the competition. When I calmed down, I started to aim at the gold medal. I was determined to get the champion!

Eventually, the competition ended and I was exhausted and soaked in sweat. It was time for the judge to announce the results. While the judge called out my name—”the champion was Lui Ka Lam”, my secondary school friends and teammates all burst with joy! hugged me and the audience gave me a standing ovation. That was just unbelievable! I was overjoyed and that was the first time I felt different from before! That was the first time I gained a sense of achievement!

Through archery, I have regained my confidence. I was once considered a loser and coward in primary school. Now, I am proud of myself for making progress and becoming a better person!