This post was written by Edd Zain.
I am a Malaysian UX designer, business owner, and mental health advocate leveraging design and community-led initiatives to reshape how young people experience work and well-being. As the founder of Eddvocate, I have spent the past five years advocating for healthier work models, particularly for freelancers and young professionals experiencing burnout within the tech and creative sectors.
I used to think that recovery is scary. It is terrifying when you don’t know who you are without depression. I had been depressed my whole life, so I feared that without depression, I would not know who I was. Who are you in the absence of this illness? Recovery, despite terrifying; is not something that happens overnight.
In 2019, I had the worse depressive episode I could ever imagined. My doctor insisted that I should be hospitalized. The next morning, I woke up thinking about my design tasks at work. I pushed my well-being up the ladder of corporate priorities. My boss did not know about my diagnosis and could not care less about the reason why I was warded. My mental issues negatively affected my daily function and focus at work, and I was truly, deeply suffering.
So, despite uncertainty, I finally decided to resign from my job.
The following three years were spent grappling with my mental health challenges, but I lacked the necessary support, knowledge, and resources to aid my recovery. After enduring a prolonged period of darkness and concealing my illness from everyone, I made the decision to candidly address the harsh reality of career burnout.
Aware that this choice could potentially harm my professional image, I chose to proceed anyway, as I was weary of hiding my diagnosis, my hospital stays, and my medication. It was exhausting to maintain the facade of being healthy when, in reality, I was struggling half the time. My transition from silent suffering to public advocacy started in 2022, when I undertook something quite daunting for someone with a typical 9-6 job:
I spoke my truth about mental illness within corporate environments.
Burnout as a Turning Point
My raw and honest reflections on X began to catch the attention of Malaysian netizens, many of whom found resonance in my posts, including Khairini; the founder of myWIPhealing. When I received an invitation to speak at The Art of Healing 2022, I found myself standing in front of a room full of strangers, sharing the story I had carried in solitude for so long. Initially, it was merely a talk, but soon I felt a warm sensation in my chest: a feeling of being seen, heard, and valued.
The turning point came when I joined SHIPS (Social Healing Impact Peer Support), the peer-led ecosystem by myWIPhealing. While most viewed support groups as places to vent, I utilized SHIPS as a soft-skills incubator. It was here — amongst other peers with similar lived experiences — that I refined the public speaking skills and social confidence necessary to lead.
The Venture
Leveraging the stability found within the SHIPS community in 2023, I expanded my reach into the work that mattered. I brought my advocacy message to universities like Universiti Teknologi MARA and Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, to corporate organizations like CALM International, collaborating with General Assembly, AirAsia Next and Hiredly. Everywhere I went, the conversations about careers and workplace mental health were ignited, and people desperately needed those. Doors were opened for me to become the voice telling them what I’d needed to hear years ago: You are not alone. You are not broken. There is another way.
Within the same year, I poured myself into helping to coordinate The Art of Healing 2023, growing the crowd by hundreds through programme planning, speaker coordination, sponsorship outreach, digital strategy and whatever it took. I completed my training as a myWIPhealing SHIPS Peer Support, learning that healing isn’t something you do once and move on from. It’s a practice, a commitment, a continuous journey of showing up for yourself and for your community.
Through frequent sharing with myWIPhealing community members, I learned deeply that true recovery requires both giving and receiving, both community and solitude. Later that year, I embarked on a self-funded, month-long journey through Vietnam. Living among rural communities, I built a website for a local homestay to support sustainable tourism. I taught a small group of villagers how to build websites and speak basic English. There, far from the pressure of tech culture that had once threatened to break me, I discovered what my healing process look like: a series of reconnection with nature, real people, and purpose.
Healing remains an ongoing practice. One that is shaped by boundaries, community care, and the courage to keep choosing myself. Healing, I learned, begins when we stop performing strength and start designing systems that support our real human limits.
Today, I stand as a designer, speaker, and advocate who refuses to accept the world as it is. I’m rewriting the rules, reshaping the conversation, and reminding the next generation that meaningful work and mental health aren’t luxuries. They’re rights worth fighting for. My diagnosis forced me to be intentional, and SHIPS gave me the stage to practice that intention.
Edd is living proof of myWIPhealing’s core thesis: When you provide the right ecosystem of care (Science) and community (SHIPS), you don’t just get a ‘recovered patient’. You get an energized leader capable of economic contribution and creative innovation.