LAHORE: As a part of its Mental Health Week celebrations, the Government College University (GCU) Lahore’s Dr Ajmal Psychology Society on Thursday held the Inter University Performing Arts Festival on the theme of “Psychology of Religion and Culture.”

Students from different varsities staged plays and mimes and highlighted the role of spirituality in the mental health recovery and wellness of humans. They also depicted various cultural conflicts present in society.

The Punjab University Department of Applied Psychology students staged a play which highlighted the conflicts among different cultural and religious groups in the varsity.

Earlier, the festival opened with a mime performance titled “Gorakh Dhanda” by the GCU Department of Psychology on the concept of Sufism and the experience of ecstasy. It showed individual quest for the divine and its manifestations in various Muslim societies.

They GCU students also staged an adaptation of known playwright Ashfaq Ahmed`s play “Sayeen Aur Psychiatrist”.

The students from COMSATS Lahore staged an English play ‘“Kindness is my religion”, while those from the University of Central Punjab presented a play “Baanjh” which exposed the conflicting attitudes of society towards male and female infertility.

A seminar on radicalization of different segments of society is also part of the five-day Mental Health Week celebrations at the GCU.

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2018