“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor and more unashamed conversation” – Glenn Close-

It has been said that something as small as the flutter of a butterfly’s wing can ultimately cause a typhoon halfway around the world. The project “Butterfly Effect 3.0” was initiated by the Community Service Avenue of the Rotaract Club of University of Sri Jayewardenepura as a small step towards enhancing the awareness of mental health and preventing repercussion from mental disruptors, which has now caused a huge impact towards the society.

Mental health embraces our emotional, psychological and social well-being which affects the way we think, feel and act and determines how we handle stress and make choices. Mental health is important for every one of every age group.

But at the present situation, the mental health rate is highly depreciated which has ultimately caused a high rate of suicide and mental instabilities around the world. And with the global pandemic situation these rates have been increased. Therefore, Butterfly Effect 3.0 has been an impactful and timely project initiated by the Community Service Avenue in order to raise awareness on mental health and to help this community in need.

The first and second phases were conducted in collaboration with Sri Lanka Sumithrayo, during the last few years, where we carried out an awareness day on mental stability and programs for target groups with mentally unstable behaviors respectively. From the third phase we collaborated with National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and Manusath Derana in order to create a favorable environment for mentally ill patients of the NIMH, Angoda.

This year we conducted the fourth phase as an extension of the project which had been conducted for three years consecutively. As we were facing a lockdown through this period because of the Covid-19 outbreak, we planned a virtual but an impactful phase. We developed the website of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), to provide solutions for the people who are having mental confusion problems. Usually this website records more than 100,000 views annually as NIMH is the only institute in Sri Lanka to address the wellbeing of mental health. Therefore, we thought of renovating and re-launching this website with a more user-friendly interface and attractive features. For this huge process, we collaborated with Kannys Lab which is a technical team consisted of university students, who helped us throughout this phase to develop this website as we and the NIMH required.

Here, we added some new features such as operation from Sinhala, English and Tamil languages as required by the user, placing online appointments and the chatbot feature i.e. frequently asked question feature.

From these features, we made it easier for the people to find out the information they require, to reach NIMH faster and to solve their problems with the help of the experts in NIMH from one click.

We re-launched the website successfully on the 28^th of May 2021, through Zoom platform, in the presence of the Director of National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Dammika Wijesinghe, Deputy Director of National Institute of Mental Health, Dr. Arosha Wijewickrama, District Rotaract Representative Rtn. Rtr. PP. Kavindra Kasun Sigera, Assistant District Rotaract Representative Rtr. PP. Himantha Alahakoon, Joint Directors- Community Service, Rtr. IPP. Hasitha Prashan, Rtr. IPP. Mindula Perera and Rtr. IPP. Rivi Wijerathne, representing the Rotaract District 3220, Kannys Lab Team, club members and the Organizing Committee members.

Finally, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Director, Deputy Director, doctors who helped us in approving the content and the technical side and the media team of the National Institute of Mental Health for trusting our team and for giving us this amazing opportunity to serve the community in need.

Also, the co-founders and the members of Kannys Lab, our Digital Strategic Partner, who helped us through this process from the technical side deserves a big “Thank You”. Last but not least, the Executive Committee, Board of Directors specially the Community Service directors, club members of the Rotaract Club of University of Sri Jayewardenepura and all the people who encouraged us through this process should be highly appreciated.

With that we successfully concluded the fourth phase of project Butterfly Effect 3.0, as another sustainable service from the Community Service Avenue of the Rotaract Club of University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

Written by Rtr. Oshani Samarakkody