“In a mental health journey, the struggle isn't like a straight line. It goes up and down,” a university student dealing with various mental health conditions from a young age told CNA podcast Heart of the Matter.
Mental health has worsened in Singapore but more are willing to seek help, according to a survey by the Ministry of Health . “I was thinking about things like money. I was thinking about things like getting good grades in order to do well in life in the future and get a stable job,” recalled the 23-year-old university student. “So I unknowingly carried a lot of burdens.”
“In primary school, I remembered being a child who was easily stressed, even though like my parents did not place any pressure on me in studying. But I was just someone who placed a lot of pressure on herself.”The National Population Health Survey, which was released last month, found that the prevalence of poor mental health rose from 13.4 per cent in 2020 to 17 per cent in 2022.
“I was repressing a lot of my symptoms and a lot of the discomfort and the emotions that were just bombarding me.” But once, when he was in the office, he had a panic attack and spent the entire day trying not to cry. That night, he went to a general practitioner, who spent 15 minutes convincing him to take time off work.His condition became progressively worse and he even wanted to take his own life.
“I find that people my age and Asian men, in particular, tend to think of ourselves as providers, we've got to be strong,” said Mr Mak. “Sometimes that internal stigma is so strong that you're stuck in a conversation with yourself in a silo. You can't reach out, you can't have people reach in, you don't know what to do.”
On what could have led to these issues, he said: “When we try to understand our clients' stories, and the problems that they present with, we know that it's not always just a single trigger. It aims to create a mental health ecosystem comprising accessible and quality clinical care with a supportive community, where individuals with mental health needs can seek help early without stigma and be supported in their recovery.“There are different avenues, different services. If knows what's happening to people around them, it becomes that much easier and also timely to intervene,” he said.
“Behaviour is another thing, like are there changes in the person's behaviours. Have they been doing certain things more, or certain things less than usual?”
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