Mental Health: Should it be feared? An Opinion
November 8th, 2019 by Sonia Clarent Ho
Mental Health had always been a taboo topic in a normal functioning Malaysian household, with the rise of modern technology and the evolution of how information is taken, younger generations of Malaysians are opening up to their mental health struggles.
When we talk mental health to our parents; the responses we get are ‘Don’t say that.’, ‘You are not crazy’, ‘you’ll grow out of it.’ which is blasphemous to anyone with knowledge of how important mental health awareness is. Unlike countries like the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Canada or any country from the western continent of the world; the Eastern continent does not openly discuss mental health, anxiety, depression as it is not part of the culture being taught by generations to generations.
According to the Mental Healthcare Performance record 2016 by the Ministry of Health Malaysia, the overall percentage of the mental health population is undetermined as there was not enough data to establish it. However, the percentage of mental health problems in adults by states is ranked: Sabah & Labuan being the highest with the percentage of 42.9%; while Perak being the lowest with the percentage of 17.0%. Not only that, adult Malaysian females are more prone to be diagnosed with mental health issues compared to their male counterparts with a percentage of 30.8% (females) to 27.6% (males). And by 2020, according to the National Health and Morbidity Survey, Mental health-related issues would be the second-biggest health issue in Malaysia seconded to Heart Attack.
In my opinion, mental health is an issue that needs to be openly discussed in a Malaysian family regardless of race, religion or ethnicity as more young Malaysians are coming out with their mental health problems. And not only that, one of the main contributors to mental health issues is the excessive use of social media. I myself do use social media on a daily basis, social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Weibo, etc. do feed their consumer the ideal body figure, the ideal look which cultivates a person’s views on the perfect lifestyle. Other than that, bullying is also a contributing factor to mental health issues in adolescent development. Bullying is the textbook example of how a child develops severe depression and anxiety. Bullying is an inescapable factor in a standard Malaysian schooling system. Every child growing up would have faced or endured bullying in either physical or psychological form. Parents should talk to their children on this issue as a bullied child would not talk to their parents about it which leads to a lot of mental health issues. As a former bullied victim myself; a piece of advice is to talk to anyone be it the only friend you have, your stuffed toy to let your frustrations out. In addition, the media’s take on mental health issues is also a factor in contributing to the awareness of mental health. With shows like Euphoria, 13 Reasons Why, Bojack Horseman just to name a few that allowed the show to address the importance and negative effects of mental health to the audiences. Not only that even movies are also tackling the issues. To elaborate on that, the movie ‘Joker’ which is another telling of DC Comics’ iconic villain from Batman’s rogues’ gallery. Although I personally have not seen the movie yet; however the news article reporting on the audience’s reception was stellar as the movie talks about how society is also the contributor to mental health issues.
Should mental health issues be feared? Of course not as it needs more time to understand the surface of it. And mental health should not be neglected in any matter as we all need a healthy psyche to function.
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