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Young people in Fiji have been offered a helping hand by Psychology student Julia Serafinska, who has designed a mental health and suicide prevention workshop programme to assist them.

Julia with her internship certificate

The programme was devised by Julia, a second-year student at Â鶹ƵµÀ Leicester (DMU), as part of a remote internship she recently completed.

Sponsored by - the university’s award-winning international experience programme - the three-month project was aimed at helping young people with mental health issues in Fiji.

“This was an amazing online internship in global psychology with a charitable organisation called Think Pacific,” Julia, aged 21, said. “It aims to support Fijian society through cooperation with government and local non-profit organisations.

“I was given a chance to choose a topic to research and it seemed like a great challenge that I felt might make a difference in that country.”

Julia, who came to DMU two years ago from Poland, added: “When I started researching, I was quite surprised at the big difference between services and support available for young people with these problems in Fiji, compared with other countries in Europe and the UK.

“There just isn’t the recognition or funding for mental health there and it can be regarded as a stigma in Fijian society. They don’t see it as a problem and are reluctant to talk about it.

“An alarming fact is that suicide rates in Fiji rose by 50 per cent in 2022 and have been increasing there since the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Additionally, the World Health Organisation indicates that Fiji has only one psychiatric facility, five psychiatrists and no psychologists. I am hoping that by tackling a project like this, it might help to break down some barriers in public perception in that country.”

Julia fitted in the internship between November 2022 and January this year, working alongside her DMU degree coursework.

She was also lucky enough to land a research assistant internship through DMU’s Frontrunner scheme from October 2022 until March 2023, during which she researched the psychology of language alongside her DMU supervisor, cognitive psychology specialist Dr Marie Bisson.

“We were testing the effectiveness of learning new languages using the interaction of sounds, words and images together,” Julia said. “It was a fascinating experience examining languages, specifically Welsh and Polish, and that internship gave me a lot of practical skills which I can use in my dissertation.”

As well as having two internships behind her, Julia has more opportunities in store before finishing her degree in September 2025. She is due to start a student exchange year in Bilbao this September, after enjoying visiting the Spanish city with DMU Global last year.

In between her busy life, Julia is also a student ambassador for DMU. “I get to meet lots of students and be involved in a number of activities,” she said. “Coming to study at DMU from Poland has given me lots of opportunities. I have really enjoyed it here - it was definitely the best thing I did.”