Anita Abu Bakar (Malaysia)

Puan Anita Abu Bakar is the Founder and President of the Mental Illness Awareness & Support Association (MIASA), a patient-led advocacy group. Anita was born and raised overseas, and subsequently pursued her tertiary education in the United States. She obtained a Bachelors Degree in Computer Information System, minoring in Management Information System. Upon her return to Malaysia, Anita pursued a career path as an investment banker and worked in the corporate world for over 10 years. She also holds an MBA in Islamic Banking and Finance from the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM).

Anita is an advocate in promoting awareness on mental illness being a recovering patient herself. She has conducted various programmes and efforts to educate the public on the importance of mental health and addressing the many misconceptions and myths on mental illness in hopes to reduce the society’s stigma and for the society to better support those struggling with the illness. One of her programmes under MIASA is named Journey to Recovery has also aired in IKIM.FM, simultaneously reaching out to those that are battling the illness alone and in silence. The most recent programme under IKIM.FM is called ‘Kembara Syifa’ and is currently on IKIM.FM into its third season.

Anita is also the Founder and Managing Director of Qaiser Darussalam Publications. It was founded in January 2013 and subsequently gained a branch status by Darussalam Publications. In Ramadhan of 2013, Qaiser did a business take-over of IslamicKids.media. Today, Qaiser Darussalam has over 80 re-sellers worldwide. In July 2013, Qaiser opened up its Islamic Academy offering Islamic classes for children, teenagers, adults, reverts and non-Muslims and currently has over 120 students. Qaiser continues to strive in being a one stop Centre for the ummah.

Anita has been a guest speaker and panelist in many conferences and programmes such as the International ASEAN & Psychology conference, the Malaysian Conference of Psychological Medicine, the International Muslim conference, BeingMe Islamic Conference, MENTARI Family Link programme, as well as participated in many discussions and interviews such as the TCI Asia Pacific roundtable discussion participated by 21 countries where MIASA is the Malaysia Rep and is now a member country and also participated in the roundtable discussion for the mental health roadmap with the Ministry of Health.

She has appeared on the Islam Channel UK Show, BernamaTV, Astro, NTV7, RTM, NXNow, Bernama Radio, Sinar, NST, Berita Harian, The Star and more. She has also attended the Optimal Health programme training (a recovery plan) which is a Malaysia- Australia collaboration, she is also part of the Review Committee for the Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) for the management of Schizophrenia patients, she has attended Quality Rights workshops, suicide gatekeeper training workshops and is currently working on many other projects. She has also spoken at many universities, corporations and government agencies across Malaysia including PERKESO, LPPKN, MARDI, PETRONAS, TNB, MHTC, MPKJ, Sunway, SEGI, KUPTM, IIUM, UKM, HUKM, UPNM, UNIKL, IUMW etc.