Mental Health Care

Mental health care [at the school level] became a hot topic recently in SIN city, no thanks to the recent homicide and potential suicide attempt. People are, as expected, saying the same platitudes over and over as though constant repetition will somehow make it true.

``Oh, if only he were to speak up...''

``Oh, the school should provide more counselling to students...''

``Peers should be taught how to help others with mental health issues...''

``The authorities should have stronger surveillance to identify such cases before they escalate...''

Notice that in all these statements, the big elephant in the room still hasn't been addressed---it is that caring for mental health in SIN city in general is taken to be even more bullshit than traditional Chinese medicine practices. We have an excellent medical system for handling physical health, a somewhat comprehensive traditional Chinese medicine system (for some reason), and a terribly overloaded system for actually diagnosing and treating mental health issues.

The problem here isn't that there isn't a good infrastructure for supporting treatment of mental health issues---that's merely a symptom. Rather, the true problem here is that ``mental health issues'' suffer from a stigma that is largely socially driven.

I'll give some examples. When someone has a cold, or runs a fever, we tell the person to go see a doctor, or rest at home and drink more water. When someone is getting a panic attack, what do we say?

We actually say nothing at all at best, ``oh hohoho, that's one crazy fella for ya!'' if we want to validate ourselves to someone nearby for whatever selfish reason, and verbally/physically abusing the person in the middle of a panic attack at worst. This type of behaviour is why anyone who is actually having a mental health issue will find it hard to find actual help---society has decided that mental health is inferior to that of physical health, especially since much of the issues are chronic in nature, and that any treatment progress is invisible anyway, unlike the removal of a tumour, or the stitching of a wound, or the stopping of a fever/cough/sneeze.

Does that dysfunctional behaviour sound familiar?

It is the same type of nonsense that one gets when we start talking about building information systems---the innate intuition that is displayed is mostly wrong about what reality is. This is also the same kind of nonsense with respect to innovation as well---if a result isn't immediately tangible, then it is deemed useless, with funding and other support cut. The relevant workers themselves suffer headache/heartache one after another---it's not a good time.

At least for work-related issues, one can usually walk away and do something else---society is big enough to allow different life paths. But in the case of mental health, not having the same level of care/professional help made available the way doctors are ubiquitous is not something that one can simply ``walk away'' from.

One of the old tenets of SIN city's relevance to the world is the availability of humans as a resource. Now, no one said that it will be all Singaporeans, a different rant for a different day, but that was the draw. In the old days where manufacturing was king, the warm bodies available just needed to be physically fit and somewhat mentally present---the thorough tip-top condition of the mind was not expected and can be argued to be somewhat dis-incentivised since it was the manual dexterity and skill associated with that level of dexterity that is the overriding principle of such factories' operation.

In the recent days, we are re-making ourselves as some kind of ``knowledge worker'', the kind that helps provide services of some sort as opposed to manufacturing products [for cheap], the so-called tertiary sector of the economy as opposed to the secondary sector. In such cases, it is what the worker knows and how he/she uses it that assists in increasing productivity. Such work isn't as easily automated as the way manufacturing is; services are always bespoke to fit particular requirements, and even when standardised, there are often enough edge cases that it is still more cost effective to train people and have an associated reporting chain for escalation than actually programming an automated assistant to handle it all.

In other words, the mental state of the person and more specifically, the mental health of that person is a determining factor of success. In that case, why then are we still pussy-footing about on improving the infrastructure to promote better healthcare, and to support mental healthcare providers the way we do for those of the physical healthcare sector?

It also does not help that SIN city is a city of stressors---we are among the most densely packed urban cities in the world, we work fucking-stupid long hours for god-knows what reason (another rant for another day), we have little to no open spaces to help relax the mind, and at the same time, are expected to out-perform everyone else in the region in industries where ``cheap and fast'' beats any pair-wise combination with ``good''. That we don't have too many death-causing violent cases from too much stress is a testament to the strength of the police state than a supportive mental healthcare system, though I really ought to do a little research on that last point on case numbers for correctness.

Lip service. That's what we are good at doing, and in some sad ironic way, I am no exception here writing out this rant in my blog.

That said though, there are other things that we can do at our so-called grassroots level while we browbeat the government to building stronger mental healthcare infrastructure, and they are surprisingly simple.

Empathy. Empathise with people a bit more, don't hide in our damn cocoons and be so bloody self-centred that we ignore everyone else that we meet on the street. Empathetic behaviours remind everyone that they are still part of a human society, and that their existence is acknowledged. It isn't much, but it is a very important link. It doesn't solve the underlying mental health issue since that requires professional work, but it does help build up a type of informal support network reminding everyone that this SIN city, despite its profit-seeking mechanistic machine behaviour, is still made up of denizens who remember what it means to be human.

Oh, and continue to browbeat the authorities until a good enough mental healthcare infrastructure is available, reframing it into their favourite economic question in order to get their undivided attention.

Till the next update.