Mental Health Awareness 360

<After volunteering at the Institute of Mental Health, I have learnt more about my target group of people with mental illness and hence decided to start increasing awareness of mental health through social media to reach more people and educate them> Spreading Awareness through Instagram Instagram is a widely used application among youths and adults hence I chose this platform to post mental health related content to educate the public on ways to take care of their mental health and support a person with a mental health condition. I had created an account named 'MentalHealth_Awareness 360 and started off with just 1 follower which is myself. Up till now, there are already 23 followers. I also used this account to follow and share other similar accounts on my story (an instagram feature) to help promote others' efforts in raising mental health stigma as well. In this process, I have also learnt some facts and advice regarding mental health wellness by exploring other accounts in this platform. I really hope that my followers can get to learn new things every week with the 1 or 2 minutes they spent reading the content I have posted. Educating my friends and family To reach out to my loved ones, I started with the easiest thing I could do – to start discussing about mental health in Singapore right at home. Like many other Singaporeans, I felt that my parents still have a stigma against people with mental illness and it is not easy to change their perceptions of this issue straightaway. However, I believe that if they are exposed to such content over a period of time, they would be able to empathise and understand people with mental illnesses better.

As a start, I decided to use Facebook as my parents have this app and it is also easier to share information on this platform. By using Facebook, I am able to reach out to my relatives and show support to many of the mental health organisations that still uses Facebook to promote their cause. I supported Beyond the Label movement by liking and sharing their page on my timeline.

Initially, my parents did not understand my intentions behind this. Many people, including my own family, do not realise the impact of mental health stigma on those affected and still have many stereotypes against this group of people. One common stereotype is thinking that depression is sign of mental weakness, while in fact, it is actually an impaired function of the brain that no one can control. It is important to correct their knowledge about mental illnesses such that they could view this issue in a more objective manner. Anyone can suffer from mental illness at any point of their life. However, I do understand that it might be hard for my parents to change the way they think about people with mental illnesses as they might have such stereotypes for a long time already.

Thankfully, my friends were able to understand this issue better and were aware of the impact that mental health stigma can cause to individuals. They are also better informed about mental health related content.