‘It’s really about normalising mental health’: What schools are doing so students seek help

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Schools in Singapore are taking steps to improve mental health, from making counselling — and good counsel — more readily available, to getting youths to keep an eye on friends and peers who might need help.

SINGAPORE: When Kranji Secondary’s peer support leaders last year initiated a project called #SAFESPACE to increase awareness of how words can hurt, they did not expect many to respond.

Speaking over the public address system during morning assembly, she told her schoolmates what they could do if someone around them showed symptoms of the illness. Each of the three Institute of Technical Education campuses, for example — which have 28,000 students in total — has eight counsellors, known as student care officers.

For instance, after lecturers at ITE College West noticed some hospitality students worrying about career prospects amid the pandemic, the officers worked with their education and career guidance colleagues to present talks to first-year hospitality students — to brighten their outlook and tell them how they could apply their skill set.

What students share with school counsellors is confidential unless a student’s safety is at stake, according to the schools CNA Insider contacted.. Where schools site their counselling room or centre is important. A central location is good “because we don’t want to stigmatise it and put it in some basement, hidden away”, said Yale-NUS College associate dean of students Cory Owen.

“Because are fellow students, they go through the same academic stressors … the same difficulties in the classroom, in their co-curricular activities and so forth,” said SMU dean of students Paulin Straughan.Similarly, at the Yale-NUS College, the P.S. We Care student group operates online or from a space in the counselling centre — COVID-19 measures permitting — from 9pm to midnight, six days a week.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

 

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In today's world, there are so many sufferers of mental unhealth. PTSDs/Depressions etc. I do know of teachers who had to stay in IMH chalets for a break n getting back depressions.

Minimise any stigma.

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