It’s our collective responsibility
THE suicide of a 16-year-old in Batu Kawah, Sarawak, who used an Instagram poll to determine her fate, has thrown the topic of mental health into the spotlight again.
As a young person myself, it is important we acknowledge that the challenges my generation faces are vastly different from generations before, amplified by social media.
As children, we would occasionally be envious of our classmate having the latest Gameboy. Now imagine being able to see the entire world’s toys through your smartphone. It doesn’t help that people tend to put their best foot forward on social media postings. We see friends holidaying in exotic locations or doing fun activities and experience Fomo (fear of missing out), forgetting that we are comparing our “behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else’s highlight reel”.
Despite social media’s ability to foster global connections, Malaysian youth still report feelings of social isolation. The National Health and Morbidity Survey 2017 reported that over a third of students aged 13 to 17 who showed depressive symptoms felt that they had no close friends.
However, banning or restricting social media usage among youth is a clumsy solution. Social media is an almost essential part of young people’s lives today, just as Microsoft Office became indispensable to corporations in the 1990s.
But there is a silver lining: On social media, especially Twitter, I’ve read many honest outpourings from young mental health patients. Some shared about barriers to getting and managing treatment, others about stigma, and some gave thoughtful recommendations for improving mental healthcare in Malaysia.
We need to bring these discussions into the physical and policymaking space.
I applaud Youth and Sports Minister Syed Saddiq Abdul Rahman for responding quickly to the Batu Kawah suicide case by calling all parties for an honest, national conversation on mental health. It is high time all stakeholders worked together to address mental health from an endto-end perspective.
Mental healthcare is more than offering counselling services or focusing on suicide prevention. We need to tackle various areas on the spectrum, from learning how to express and process our emotions healthily and building mental resilience early in childhood, to identifying signs of mental distress and assessing treatment, as well as managing mental illnesses at home and in the workplace.
Reframing or broadening the discussion on mental health may help in reducing stigma, in that people realise that: (1) individual mental health is a continuous “work in progress”; (2) it is all right to seek help; and (3) mental health affects everyone, even those who are seemingly normal or highly successful.
To this end, I echo my colleague, Subang Jaya assemblyman Michelle Ng, in calling for the decriminalisation of attempted suicide. The punishment underlined in Section 309 of the Penal Code – that is, one year imprisonment or a fine or both – is counter-productive and cruel towards suicide survivors, who need help, not imprisonment.
Furthermore, criminalising suicide attempts would only drive those who are considering suicide to ensure that they are successful in their first attempt.
In a larger context, reframing how we as a society respond to setbacks and failures – whether on our part or others’ – is also crucial in reducing stigma towards mental health patients.
It is a collective failure that fellow Malaysians saw a 16-year-old’s cry for help on Instagram as something trivial. It will also be our collective responsibility to ensure such a case never happens again.