Mental Health and Why it Matters

On 19 December 2017, renowned K-pop idol singer and songwriter, Kim Jonghyun, committed suicide, at the age of 27. Upon further inspection, it was noted that he suffered from depression, in which in the end, after struggling tremendously with it, finally decided to take his own life.

Soon after, news articles about his death started flooding my entire social media news feed, from Facebook to Instagram. I was utterly shocked and saddened to receive this really terrible news.

After all, Jonghyun's musical compositions and works inspired me A LOT, especially during my finals when I was 16. Ironic as it sounds, his musical works were meant to heal people's wounds and give them strength when they were faced with adversities in life when in fact, the one who needed the most comfort and healing was none other than the composer himself.

Following his death, I decided that I had to take some sort of action - be it small or big - to increase awareness of mental health education in Singapore. Now, you may ask, what's with the relation of his death to Singapore? Like South Korea, Singapore is also an extremely stressful society, in many aspects, such as work and education. While South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, Singapore is nowhere better, in terms of the number of teenage suicides, which has been the high side over these few years. I decided to publish my article to the Straits Times Forum to increase awareness of mental health education in Singapore (you can read it here: http://www.straitstimes.com/forum/letters-in-print/teach-mental-health-in-schools).

While there are currently exisiting programmes to educate the youths about sex education, I personally feel that mental health education is also equally important and therefore there is a need to introduce some kind of educational programme to teach the vulnerable young ones that it is perfectly okay to speak about how they feel towards something. Furthermore, mental health is seen as a rather taboo topic, especially in conservative societies like Singapore, in which people fear talking about it because it is perceived to be a sign of weakness.

While I acknowledge that school counsellors and teachers are available in schools for students to open up about their feelings should they need help, I strongly feel that these measures are insufficient and that a more concrete kind of educational programme should be implemented. This is so that the youths, especially those studying in rather stressful environments, can be more open about their feelings and if symptoms of mental illnesses persist, they can be aware of the available avenues out there for them to seek help.

Certainly, more has to be done to raise awareness about mental health in Singapore, but if the relevant authorities and organisations start taking action, perhaps Singapore can be a much more happier society.

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