Briefing the Interviewee

Hello, thank you for agreeing to be a part of this research interview. The initiative aims to better understand the experiences and needs of visible minority groups seeking care for mental health and well-being as well as their lifestyle, and mental health, and wellbeing self-care habits.

The information collected from this interview will remain anonymous. Please try to answer all of the questions fully, and if for some reason you do not want to answer a question please let me know.

Before starting do you have any questions for me?

Warm up questions:

  1. How’s your day been?
  2. What is your name, age, sex, race, ethnic background, religion, and sexual orientation? If you have any other aspects of your identity you would like to add please do so.
    1. 26, female, (she her), South Asian, Muslim, Straight
  3. What are your pronouns?
    1. (she, her)
  4. Where are you from and where do you currently reside?
    1. Born in Pakistan, grew up in Dubai, and live in Toronto.
  5. What economic class do you belong to (for example: middle class etc.)?
    1. Upper middle.
  6. Can you briefly describe your current occupation?
    1. Associate portfolio manager, financial advice and financial planning services.

General Questions:

  1. How would you describe your current lifestyle?
    1. Oh, interesting. Well, I feel like with the with the pandemic, I don't do too much of a active lifestyle anymore. Up until I got my dog recently. So now that gets me moving out of the house. So I walked her every morning and evening. But otherwise, like my days, mostly working. i A feel like I mean, in terms of like eating and stuff like I, I eat relatively healthy. But other than the weekends, I'll definitely I'll definitely binge on the weekends. That yeah, otherwise my life is pretty much just like work, school, and sleep.
  2. In what ways do you think your current lifestyle affects your health and well-being?
    1. Yeah, I think that the my, my current lifestyle isn't as great for my mental health as I as maybe I have been in the past, before the pandemic hit, I used to be very I used to go to the gym every single day I used to I actually used to like track what I eat now everything and I feel like I do recognize now like I had so much more energy then I and so I also felt better and kind of throughout the pandemic, because I kind of lost those habits that I had built over time, I started to feel an impact on my mental health, for sure. And especially kind of like working from home not really having people to interact with. I kind of felt that decline on my mental health over time. And kind of a lot of it was just like, constantly tired, like, no energy, no motivation. Like I got to this point where like, after work at five, like I just couldn't do anything. Like I just sit on the couch and like Instagram for hours. Watching TV. Yeah, so I feel like my the way my current lifestyle is like, not a great impact on my mental health. And I also was just like, just doing work and like nothing else. So nothing, that really nothing that was really fun. Or that was more nurturing, I guess. So yeah, throughout the pen. Like later, I guess like last year, I started seeing a therapist once I noticed I was like, okay, things are not like they used to be. So yeah, definitely see that impact of just my change in lifestyle and not being very active anymore. Just how that impacted my mental health over time, but still haven't started working out again.
  3. Do you think you are touch with your emotions and mental headspace? If so why?
    1. Lately, my therapist has been making me track my emotions due to emotional dysregulation. Did not know the ups and downs of my emotions. Working on building space for the the things that happen and my reaction.
  4. Do you have a support network? If so why do you think it is important and how have they helped you?
    1. Yeah, I think it's definitely important to have a support network. So I live with I live with my boyfriend and but otherwise, like, I don't really have family here. All my family lives in London in the UK. So it can definitely feel lonely at times. But I think that kind of going back to like isolation and the pandemic, just having even like one person there who you can spend time with like, I didn't really feel the isolation early on didn't really feel the impacts for sure. Because it's just like, at least you got one person to kind of spend it with and who can who can support you. Otherwise, they think like my therapist was honestly like a really great part of my support network. But otherwise, like, even though my family's far away, they're you know, they're the typical South Asian family. They're always checking in. Sometimes it's a lot sometimes it's really nice to know that they're always there. But yeah, other than that, just kind of having friends around in the city too. But I'd say kind of like mainly my support network has been just like my boyfriend, my family. But yeah, even though they're not near, I mean, it's so easy. Like FaceTime, or whatever to just like, talk to them, whatever.

Specific Questions:

  1. How would you describe the current state of your mental health and well-being?
    1. So I say nowadays, the difficult one, work has been really busy and kind of with, along with kind of the school work I have too. It's, it's interesting, we're kind of I do feel like a little bit tired and kind of on the edge of almost burning out through through work... But it's also like the, the novelty of what I learn in school and what we're doing has been, has actually like, helped like counteracted a little bit. So I feel like generally, I'm in a fairly good mental state compared to maybe even a couple of months ago, where I just felt completely were just like, work got super busy near the end of last year. And I think I actually got to at like a point where where I got it was really burnt out and like not feeling good about it at all. So I think like relative to that ending, I definitely did make an effort to try and like sleep better and eat better. I was like, I can't, I can't take work time off work. I don't have like any vacation days right now. And so I just like focused on eating well, and the fact that I'm sleeping well. And I feel like I really made a difference. And then I think just like the Yeah, taking time to do stuff that's not work is also has also been pretty good. So I think I'm steadily steadily been getting better in terms of I forgot what you mentioned your question like mental space?