Healthy Mind Project
Educating the way to Emotional Wellbeing
Welcome to the Healthy Mind Project website with resources to help increase overall emotional wellbeing in children & adults.
The Project's Story
Hi, I'm Zareen, Founder of Healthy Mind Project.
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Like most women out there, I wear many different hats! Mine include mother, step-mother, wife, friend, hug-giver, dog lover, psychology enthusiast, museum junkie, travel lover, write, educator, public speaker & documentary filmmaker.
I've always been fascinated with human behaviour, and I'm particularly passionate about all things relating to emotional resilience and understanding anxiety & trauma, particularly after suffering from traumatic stress disorder over ten years ago, and living with a chronic illness. A couple of years ago, I published my first book 'The Tiny Life Guru', a small guide to some of the qualities and reflections that can help build that resilience. With a qualification in trauma management, I'm also a qualified life coach and am currently undertaking a psychology degree.
In addition to my study and research, I feel privileged to have worked with a diverse range of people, including some of the wealthiest people in the world, Department of Corrections psychologists, litigation lawyers, terminally ill patients, addicts, members of an Online Child Exploitation Police Team, child trafficking prevention organisations and other experts in New Zealand & globally working in the online safety field.
After spending some years working with women in relation to the fundamentals of emotional resilience, my work life took an unexpected turn in 2018 when researching the impacts of handheld devices on children, tweens & teens as my husband and I started to be bombarded with requests from our kids for smartphones and gaming consoles. Both concerned about the rises in anxiety and depression in tweens and teens, we spent almost two years researching in this space before making and releasing our documentary 'Our Kids Online: Porn, Predators & How to Keep The Safe'. (Production of our second documentary in this two part series 'Our Kids Online: Social Media, Gaming & The Developing Brain' is currently on hold due to the Covid-19 pandemic).
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With production of our second documentary on hold, I decided to found the Healthy Mind Project. The aim? To bring together all my work and experience and offer resources to help increase emotional wellbeing adults and children alike.
In October 2020, we began touring New Zealand, speaking to parents in school information evenings about what we had learned and offering solutions to help keep their families safer. To date, we have worked with almost a hundred schools & organisations and have spoken to thousands of parents. Our work recently expanded to include the provision of presentations to schools students aged 6 to 18 years.