Exhibition to Raise Schizophrenia Awareness: "Let's Not Look Away"

The exhibition "Don't Turn a Blind Eye - The Schizophrenia Journey from Prehistory to Today" opened its doors to visitors on 8 May at DenizGaleri. The exhibition, a first in Turkey and aimed at creating public awareness on schizophrenia, seeks to raise awareness about schizophrenia by rejecting prejudices and stigma. The exhibition "Don't Turn a Blind Eye - The Schizophrenia Journey from Prehistory to Today" tells the development of the disease throughout history while offering the opportunity to empathize through interesting visuals and animations. Within the scope of 24 May World Schizophrenia Day, the exhibition "Don't Turn a Blind Eye" presents methods used in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses from ancient times to today, societies' approaches to the subject, and the centuries-long efforts of scientists and physicians through interesting visuals and animations, focusing on raising awareness about schizophrenia by rejecting prejudices and stigma. Elif Elkin, General Manager of Abdi İbrahim Otsuka, stated that they launched the "Don't Turn a Blind Eye" project to increase public awareness and knowledge about schizophrenia and to ensure support for schizophrenia patients in all areas of life: "As Abdi İbrahim Otsuka, we continue to produce solutions that will improve patients' lives with our products, while on the other hand conducting effective awareness activities that will contribute to public health. It is known that there are approximately 600,000 schizophrenia patients in our country and new patients are added to this number every day. We launched our 'Don't Turn a Blind Eye' project in 2015 to raise public awareness about schizophrenia. We have brought our exhibition 'Don't Turn a Blind Eye - The Schizophrenia Journey from Prehistory to Today' to Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Kocaeli so far and have managed to reach more than 2 million people. This exhibition, which has attracted great interest from the first day, has also received many important awards," he said.Elkin emphasized that the partnership with Denizbank has made an important contribution to the work Abdi İbrahim Otsuka has conducted in the field of schizophrenia, stating: "We are extremely pleased to hold our exhibition at DenizGaleri in Denizbank's General Directorate this year.

The exhibition features animations that allow visitors to experience what schizophrenia patients feel during the most intense period of the disease, live examples of treatment methods and unknown aspects of schizophrenia.

We aim to take the exhibition to other cities in Turkey after Istanbul and reach more people. One of our greatest goals is to create awareness about public health in Turkey. We will continue our efforts in this direction without slowing down," he said.