4. Barriers to Help-Seeking
◦ Peer stigma ◦ Lack of information ◦ Lack of time
Tay, A. K. P. (2014) Study on Mental Health Stigma of Singapore Youths Aged 17 - 25
9. What we did:
Dialogue 1 Dialogue 2 HPB Training IMH Training Dialogue 3 Dialogue 4
22 Jan 3 Feb 20 Feb 22 Feb 18 Mar 13 Apr
Hope: Going
Beyond Illness
Help: Support is
All Around
Youth Health
Ambassador
Training
Volunteer Training
& Contact with
patients
Heroes:
Recognising
Efforts, Inspiring
Action
Handle with Care:
Strength in
adversity
Peers in Recovery Mental Health
Professionals
Skills-based
training for
spotting and
supporting
peers
Understand
institutional
care and
interact with
patients
Volunteers Caregivers
Education Contact Education
10. “Recovery is 100%
possible and can be
life-changing”
“Mental illness can be a
positive thing that gives
courage. Support is the key
to progressing in the
journey.”
11. “Hope: Going Beyond Illness”
59%
30%
11%
0%0%
PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE CRAZY
Strongly DISAGREE Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
52%
22%
22%
4%
PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES ARE NOT LIKE US, NORMAL PEOPLE
Strongly DISAGREE Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly agree
12. “There are SO many avenues
for help available. I can
better refer friends to
professional help services
should they need it”
13. “Help: Support is All Around”
◦94% believe they can better empathise with those
in need
◦82% believe they can better understand how to
reach out to people in need
17. Youth Health
Ambassador
Training
I learnt…
“the importance of listening”
“conversational skills to better communicate better with those who are in need”
“basic knowledge about the various mental illness”
“how to approach people with mental illness”
“how to listen, connect, don't give advice that is not asked for”
20. Overall Success
Reached 200 students
Partnered 20 individuals
from 14 organisations
Decrease in stigma
towards mental illnesses
Increase willingness to
contribute to the sector
Recruited 12 facilitators
and 6 new committee
members
25. Effectiveness of Approach
Applying evidence- based
paradigms to de-stigma
Using intimate conversations
to raise awareness
Bringing students in contact
with persons with mental
health issues
Introduce us: Mental Health Wing housed under the Chua Thian Poh Community Leadership Programme (CTPCLP)
Let us begin by why we chose to advocate about mental health within NUS?
Mental illness affects 1 in every 5 youths worldwide.
Yet, its been found that 2 out of 3 people (67%) with mental illnesses do not seek help. Why is that the case?
Stigma towards people w mental illnesses is still very strong and prevalent. Local research on mental health literacy uncover prevailing attitudes that associate mental illness with “personal weakness,” that is PMHI are “weak, not sick” and they “could get better if they wanted to.” Some also view PMHI as “unpredictable” or even “dangerous.”
These are some of our objectives. Put simply, we had the vision to achieve mental wellness for all in NUS. We wanted to create an environment within NUS where honest, open, and empowering dialogue about mental illness can happen. We hoped to encourage help-seeking for persons suffering in silence from mental health issues and engage students in recovery (to realise that they are not alone). We also hoped to build an empathetic and trained NUS student body and catalyse the development of an empathetic and socially inclusive NUS community that embraces students in recovery.
This is a summary of the activities we conducted under our BUBW campaign. We worked within the education-contact-education framework that Yifeng has just shared about. We organised 4 dialogue sessions involving specific groups of people - persons in recovery, professionals, volunteers and caregivers. Each dialogue focused on different themes and specific takeaways and I will be discussing them individually in more detail in the next few slides.
For our first dialogue, Hope: Going Beyond Illness, we invited three individuals who have been previously diagnosed with mental illnesses to share about their recovery journey. All three are strong advocates in the mental health cause in their daily lives. Their genuine and honest sharing gave participants personal insights into what it’s like being diagnosed with mental illness and how it is possible to overcome their illnesses to accomplish as much as the next person. Participants left believing that recovery from mental illnesses is possible and that we should not be so quick to label and stigmatise those with ill mental health. Participants also learnt the importance of supporting those with mental illnesses by being empathetic and offering a helping hand.
From post-dialogue results, we also identified a decrease in stigma towards people with mental illnesses. Majority disagreed that people with mental illnesses were “crazy” and were not “normal”. However, there were still 1 or 2 people that believed that PWMI are not like us normal people and this highlights how people’s perceptions can still be enduring and that advocacy and awareness raising is an ongoing and difficult journey.
Our second dialogue focused on professionals. We invited 3 mental health professionals from the different areas IMH specifically a psychiatric nurse, a case manager from the Early Psychosis Intervention Programme and a youth support worker from CHAT (community health assessment team). Given that our target group was NUS students, we invited a psychologist from NUS’s own counselling and psychological services. The session reached its aim of highlighting the different avenues of help available and also provided insights into simple steps one can take to help their friend or family member going through mental health issues.
Post-dialogue feedback also had positive findings. Participants reported being better able to empathise and to reach out to those in need.
The third dialogue, heroes: recognising efforts, inspiring action was targeted at volunteers in the mental health sector. This included three big non-profit organisations that are active in helping people with mental illnesses including Silver Ribbon, the organiser of this wonderful conference, Over The Rainbow and Clubheal. Our last speaker came from the achievers, a group that regularly conducts programs and befriends the clients at the institute of mental health.
It was another successful session and participants left with takeaways that: stigma should be challenged and it is up to each of us to address it (which was said by Porsche). They also indicated increased willingness to volunteer with patients with mental illness.
The final dialogue focused on caregivers. We did this because caregivers tend to be the hidden crux behind mental illnesses. Mental illness never just impacts the individual with the illness but the people around them so we wanted to learn how caregivers “handled with care”. We wanted to find out what it is like supporting a loved one with mental illness, the types of challenges caregivers face, and how to overcome the challenges to best support the individual while remembering to care for themselves.
Post-dialogue feedback found all participants reported learning more about:
How they can help loved ones, should they be diagnosed with mental illness
How they themselves can cope better with supporting a loved one
Highlighted the different types of community resources that support caregivers in their caregiving journey, and also where us, the general public, can turn to when we need assistance in supporting our loved one
Besides the dialogue sessions, we conducted a Youth Health Ambassador training by the Health Promotion Board. It proved to be successful in teaching students how to listen, connect and help those around them. The session was also able to inspire participants to do more to promote mental health.
This was evident in how two participants used the lessons from the training session to create their own mental health programs in their residential colleges (which is a place in NUS University Town where students stay). They separately created CAPTsupport, a group dedicated to raising awareness of mental health issues and Love, USP, which aimed to start the conversation on mental health issues within the community, so as to create a more empathetic and sensitive environment towards such issues.
Besides education and raising awareness, we wanted students to have direct experience interacting with people with mental health issues. We organised a training session by IMH and it was well-received, with close to 40 participants. The session gave them insights into what institutional care was like and provided an hour-long contact with the patients. Feedback from the sessions were very positive with many gaining a better understanding of people with mental health issues and showing increased willingness to volunteer
Looking at our overall success, we impacted close to 200 students and partnered 20 individuals from 14 organisations. By comparing preandpost survey results for the 6 programs, there was a definite decrease in stigma towards people with mental health issues. All participants reported that they felt enriched by the varied perspectives and are now more aware of the complex issues facing PMHI, mental health professionals, volunteers and caregivers. Many reported increased willingness to contribute to the sector. As a testimony of that, the MHW saw 8 repeated attendees, 12 facilitators volunteering their skills and six joining our Mental Health Wing as committee members.
After the success of our first campaign, we ran another series of programs this semester from august to now.
Due to time constraints, I will focus on our recent session on 15 September and share about the unique components we tried out and that managed to receive positive feedback and great learning from those who attended. The session was entitled Conversations in the dark. As the name implies, participants gathered for deep and honest conversations in pure darkness. The main component of the session was a blindfolded networking. Participants were asked to wear blindfolds and the lights were dimmed. They were separated into small groups and within each small group, we had individuals with previous experience of mental illnesses. We believed that in darkness, people can be free from stigma and judgement, share more openly and be more accepting of each other. Everyone in the group was also free to share any experiences they had be it personal exp with mental health problems or related to supporting someone through illness. Through the short 10 minutes, participants were able to learn about what mental illness entails, how to better support people with mental illness, what works and also what doesn’t work to help someone through a mental illness. Besides this, we got participants to focus on their strengths and similarities and common struggles to drive across the message that we are all humans and regardless of our mental struggles, we are all very similar.
Another unique component of our session was the social distance walk. We adapted from the priviledge walk and the purpose of this “social distance walk” was to learn to recognize how we form social distance between different groups of people whether or not we are not aware that it is happening. Everyone started out on the same line and moved according to their level of stigma towards people with mental illnesses. A step forward meant lesser stigma and support for the mental health cause (e.g. stepping forward if you think it is important to learn more about people with mental health problems). Whereas, A step back indicated presence of stigma towards people with mental illnesses (e.g. Take a step back if you would be embarrassed if it were known that a family member had a mental illness). All these steps were based on questions adapted from actual research on social distance towards people with mental health issues. At the end of the activity, participants had a visual sense of how social distance is present amongst them. The session also enabled people to recognise their own subconscious prejudice and stigma towards people with mental illnesses.
Attrition – people don’t keep coming back for talks, come based on their interest
Can’t force people to come for stuff
Unless have captive audience
