According to an article published on 4 August 2020, the Samaritans of Singapore (SOS) reports that suicide remains the leading cause of death among people aged 10-29 in Singapore, adding that the number of suicides among the 20-29 age cohort remain the highest compared to other age groups.
You know we live in a first world country when the leading cause of death for your youth is suicides and not preventable infectious diseases. Credit where due, every school in Singapore today has a full-time school counselor. In fact, our school had three counselors at the start of this year, two of whom were here on a contractual basis whose duration of commitment have since elapsed and they are no longer attached to our school.
Recently we had a mental health wellness seminar for a CCE (Character and Citizenship Education) lesson in school, wherein the speaker shared with us statistics and studies regarding the importance of sleep or having a balanced diet. In addition, we were introduced to numerous airy-fairy, though scientifically-proven, techniques to reduce stress such as by taking up gardening as a hobby, for some magic bacteria lives in the dirt that can be absorbed by our skin and chemically improve our mood. This was compounded by the reiteration of nebulous solutions what we already know, such as the importance getting more sleep, without the provision of concrete and actionable advice.
I think that the key issue that I take with the solutions shared is that they seem highly out of touch with the persons whom they are trying to help. For example, the persons who understand the importance of exercise include almost everyone, but the persons who actually act on those understandings by incorporating regular exercise into their daily routine are few. Thus, the persons who can benefit most from the exercise are in fact never going to do exercise on their own, even though they understand the benefits of engaging in physically strenuous activity; the problem is less so that we fail to understand that sleep is good for us, but rather that we cannot seem to work into our schedules 6-8 hours of sleep every night unless we are very disciplined, and those who are very disciplined most probably already have little problems coping with the daily stresses of school and life at large. Therefore, this demonstrates that whilst the bulk of wellness advice today promoted to my demographic are undoubtedly targeted, they are targeted poorly, benefiting only those who stand to gain the least from this advice.
Perhaps one of the key issues facing organisations today that deal with the promotion of mental health amongst the youth in Singapore is that they don't know where to start, leading them to suggest solutions that, whilst scientifically proven, do not really target the root causes of the issue, and may instead seem out of touch - because they largely are. This might thus, conversely, lead to the individuals who need the most help feeling that their needs are not understood, which might lead them to not seek help from the parties whom they should be seeking help from.
Furthermore, the most insidious aspect of the mental health discussion is that mental health issues exist on a spectrum, ranging from the medically diagnosable to the momentary. Because of this, it is very difficult to ascertain where exactly on this spectrum an individual might lie. It is often said that every case matters and that we should not downplay our concerns and worries when it comes to the maintenance of good mental health, however it would be indefensible to claim that every case matters equally and is equally important when compared objectively from an external perspective.
This especially becomes a problem when we are considering any case but the extremes. The extremes are relatively easy to differentiate - for example, if someone is intending suicide, this would be of grave concern, but if someone has just failed an ungraded assignment and feels sad for 30 minutes, that would not objectively be as serious, even if it is stressing out the individual in question nonetheless. Thus, this leads to the realisation of an indeterminate middle class of cases comprising mental-emotional issues that are not grievous enough to warrant urgent attention or dedication of resources, but are greatly bothering the individual on a personal level regardless, especially as we each might not have fully understood and mastered our personal coping mechanisms to overcome such setbacks.
This issue seems analogous to, and can be better understood by considering, the varying income levels of consumers in a modern capitalist society. The argument follows that persons in the lower-income bracket receive more help and subsidies from the government, whilst those in the higher-income bracket are able to comfortably afford their own consumption desires. This leaves the persons in the middle class, who are not poor enough to receive additional aid from the government but not affluent enough to attain the desired level of comfort, sandwiched in between. In terms of the distribution of resources, the middle class could thus be argued to be losing out on the benefits of equitable economic growth.
Similarly, persons with mental-emotional issues that exist on the middle section of the spectrum might find it difficult to seek help because their problems might not be as serious as those on the upper extreme of the spectrum, but their level of comfort might also not be to the desired level of the worry-free end of the spectrum.
This issue manifests in problems with resource allocation. From my limited understanding, the SOS is the hotline to contact if one intends to or knows of someone who intends to inflict bodily harm on oneself or others. Hence, for individuals who do not have such intentions, it might feel like if we reach out to such important hotline, that we are depriving the resource from someone else who actually needs it.
The difficulty in determining where on the spectrum our issues lie is exacerbated by the discrepancy in the assigning of values to personal problems between the individual experiencing them and the external observer. This means that other people might view the personal problems as not objectively grave, because they really might be trivial, even though they might mean a lot to and be greatly impacting the mental-emotional well-being of the affected.
Therefore, in designing educational material and intervention for the youth on raising awareness of the importance of the maintenance of mental-emotional health, perhaps it would be important to realise that the youth in need of mental-emotional advice and assistance might not be reaching out to get help because there exists imperfect information on the appropriate avenues to seek help from in this middle part of the spectrum, where the currently known sources of help have proven time and again to be greatly out of touch with us. Moreover, many professional counselling services that could be of help are out of reach of the individual student due to their relatively high upfront monetary costs.
To circumvent this, perhaps our institutions of education can partner with state-registered professional counseling services to provide options for students to seek counseling, and design curricula that better address some common concerns with actionable advice, coupling theory with practice and relevant exercises. In addition, just as how the ministry is taking steps to shift the focus away from academic achievement by mandating every student engage in a co-curricular activity and by redesigning national assessment grading systems, so schools can step up and take steps to act more unironically in promoting wellness instead of merely paying lip service to the importance of building emotional resilience. However, this promotion must be done commensurately for overdoing it might be counterproductive or even detrimental.
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Important Advisory: I am not qualified to counsel, offer professional advice, or give medical diagnoses, but remain available for most well-intentioned conversation. If you think you or someone you know is facing severe mental-emotional issues, especially involving physical harm to self or others, please reach out to your local mental health service. You are not alone, and everything's gonna be okay.
(Samaritans of Singapore 24-hour hotline: 1800-221 4444 )
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